Nicolás Maduro has announced the privatization of public companies in Venezuela. In his timid privatization steps, he has put up for sale between 5% and 10% of the shares of the companies on the Caracas stock exchange. In statements to the official media, the president did not elaborate on what kind of state companies and under what conditions the sale of shares will take place, but he did mention the CANTV telephone company, the basic companies of Guayana (south of the country) and gas .
He did not mention the state oil industry of PDVSA, whose eventual privatization would have to first modify the Hydrocarbons Law by Parliament, where the Venezuelan State must appear with 51% of the shares in any contract signed with private entities.
The Venezuelan president has made a 180-degree turn in national economic policy that not even Chavez would have dreamed of. The legacy that he left him nine years ago before he died was a little book entitled ‘Plan de la Patria’ that proposes absolute control of the State in companies and in society, which Maduro has reversed and partially applied to his convenience.
Contrary to the opening initiated by Maduro, his predecessor Chávez was an enemy of private enterprise and ordered the nationalization of companies and the expropriation of the means of production in the best way of Marxism. Maduro, on the other hand, tries to attract private capital and foreign and national investors with the privatization of companies and the dollarization of the economy to complete the slogan that ‘Venezuela fixed itself’ after the deep crisis of hyperinflation of 35,000% and fall of 80%. of GDP during his tenure.
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