IDB drafts two-year Venezuela plan, says electricity and social needs are key

NEW YORK, Sept 21 - The Inter-American Development Bank is drawing up a two-year engagement plan for Venezuela focused partly on electricity and social protection, IDB President Ilan Goldfajn said on Monday.

“We are, of course, reengaging,” Goldfajn told Reuters in an interview. “We have missions to Venezuela, looking at the situation, dealing with the macroeconomic framework, looking at the data and devising an engagement note, a document where we can say this is what we plan to do in the next two years.”

The IDB is the largest development lender in Latin America and the Caribbean and has 48 member countries, including 26 borrowing members in the region. It stopped making new loans to Venezuela in May 2018 after the country fell behind on payments, and still has about $2 billion in outstanding Venezuelan loans.

Goldfajn did not say how Venezuela’s arrears would be addressed or when financing could resume.

“We are still in the moment of planning and working with Venezuelans, engaging and going to the missions, and seeing how we can work with them,” he said.

Asked whether the IDB was preparing its own debt-sustainability analysis for Venezuela, Goldfajn said it was instead concentrating on the country’s macroeconomic framework and requirements across individual sectors. REUTERS