Sunday, October 28, 2018

Venezuela goes Deadbeat


A Deadbeat is someone who borrows money and never repays it.  Rather than breaking their legs, China is drilling their oil.  Deadbeats are often incompetent and this applies to Venezuela as well.  See articles below:

Venezuela Debt Wreck Marks New Milestone as $6.1 Billion Unpaid By Patricia Laya 8/17/18.

Venezuela’s debt crisis passed a new milestone as the government missed a principal payment on one of its bonds for the first time this week, boosting arrears on international securities to $6.1 billion.


It was hardly a surprise for investors, who have watched the value of their securities plummet since President Nicolas Maduro announced in November that he would seek to restructure the country’s debt in the midst of an economic crisis. But it reinforced the difficult position creditors find themselves in as the overdue payments pile up with no resolution in sight and no easy recourse for getting their money back.

Maduro’s recent measures to reduce long-standing gasoline subsidies and redenominate the currency by lopping off five zeroes, both set to take effect this month, are steps in the right direction but ultimately unlikely to help the country pay back bondholders, said Siobhan Morden, who heads Nomura Securities International’s Latin America fixed-income strategy.

“It still looks like a countdown with economic crisis morphing into political crisis for the Maduro administration,” Morden said in an Aug 15 note.


https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-17/venezuela-debt-wreck-marks-new-milestone-as-6-1-billion-unpaid

Payment seen unlikely on $1.1 billion in maturing Venezuela bonds, by Rodrigo CamposBrian Ellsworth, 8/15/18, Reuters


NEW YORK/CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela faces payments of $1.1 billion in interest and principal on two bonds maturing on Wednesday, but investors expect the cash-strapped nation to continue its pattern of no payments.

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro holds a bank note of the new Venezuela's currency Bolivar Soberano (Sovereign Bolivar) as he speaks during a meeting with ministers at Miraflores Palace in Caracas, Venezuela July 25, 2018. Miraflores Palace/Handout via REUTERS

The government of President Nicolas Maduro has halted almost all foreign debt payments, leaving Venezuela, which has a debt load of around $60 billion in direct and subsidiary foreign bonds, in default.

“We assume no funds allocated to make the sovereign amortization today as the first sovereign default and headline confirmation of cash flow stress,” Siobhan Morden, head of Latin America fixed income strategy at Nomura Securities International, wrote in a note to clients.


UPDATE 3-Venezuela hands China more oil presence, but no mention of new funds, by Ben Blanchard and Alexandra Ulmer, 9/14/18. Reuters.



BEIJING/CARACAS, Sept 14 (Reuters) - Venezuela gave China another stake in the OPEC nation's oil industry and signed several other deals in the energy sector, but Beijing made no mention of new funds for Caracas during President Nicolas Maduro's visit to his key financier on Friday.

Maduro's leftist government sold a 9.9 percent stake in the low-cost Sinovensa joint venture, where China National Petroleum Corporation has a 40 percent share, to China, it said in a statement.

The statement also said China and Venezuela had signed a "memorandum for cooperation in Ayacucho bloc 6," located in Venezuela's vast oil-rich Orinoco Belt, without elaborating.

China will drill 300 wells in Ayacucho and extend $184 million in financing for the joint oil venture Petrozumano, the statement added. A source at PDVSA, who asked to remain anonymous because he is not allowed to speak to media, said oil services and procurement at Sinovensa would be handled by Chinese companies.

It was unclear what China, which has ploughed more than $50 billion into Venezuela through oil-for-loan agreements, was giving in return.

PDVSA and Venezuela's Information Ministry did not respond to a request for information about the deal. Maduro said on Thursday he was going to China on a four-day trip with "great expectations" and promised to return with "big achievements."

Premier Li Keqiang told Maduro that Beijing was willing to provide the crisis-hit country with what help it can, according to Chinese government statements on Friday.

But there was no reference in Chinese state media or in Chinese government statements to new funds for Venezuela, which is struggling with a fifth year of recession and an economy wracked by hyperinflation.

Over a decade, oil-for-loan agreements helped China secure energy supplies for its fast-growing economy while bolstering an anti-U.S. ally in Latin America.

The flow of cash halted nearly three years ago, however, when Venezuela asked for a change of payment terms amid falling oil prices and declining crude output that pushed its state-led economy into a hyperinflationary collapse.

Venezuela's finance ministry in July said it would receive $250 million from the China Development Bank to boost oil production but offered no details. Venezuela previously accepted a $5 billion loan from China for its struggling oil sector but has yet to receive the entire amount.

In a separate meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Maduro said Venezuela was willing to "explore effective financing methods" with China and strengthen cooperation in the energy sector, Chinese state media said, citing Maduro without elaborating.

Xi told Maduro China would, as before, support the Venezuelan government's efforts to seek stability and development. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard, Cheng Fang and Chen Aizhu in Beijing Additional reporting by Angus Berwick in Caracas. Editing by Susan Thomas and Dan Grebler)


Comments

Venezuela is going the deadbeat route of simply not paying off their $60 billion in loans.  Venezuela is also incompetent and cannot drill its oil because it let its equipment crumble and lost the employees who knew how to drill oil.  It also can’t keep track of the oil it does drill, so the Chinese are repaying themselves for their loan to Venezuela by drilling their own oil in Venezuela’s oil patch. Venezuela is becoming, in effect, a province of the PRC. Expensive wars are no longer necessary to conquer other countries. China is using financing and Muslims and welfare refugees are using migration.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

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