Search Results for: Venezuelan

The suspension for alleged corruption by senior officials at a financial intelligence unit (FIU), the cornerstone of any jurisdiction’s AML work, would be shocking. But if those suspensions were at the FIU of the world’s only purely theocratic state, such reports would sound like the work of thriller fiction.…

IT has been another subdued year for the beauty and personal care product market in Latin America, as the region’s economy underperforms yet again after six years of deceleration (and in some countries outright recession), keeping a lid on sales growth. …

BANKS worldwide are having to take increasing care lest they be fined for violating sanctions and not having adequate regulatory compliance regimes in place. With the USA expanding sanctions against Venezuela and Iran, financial institutions need to not only have adequate screening software but anticipate potential new regulations and that regulators will be pouring over past activities.…

In a significant ramp up of its pressure on the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the United States Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Monday (January 28) announced the imposition of new sanctions against the country’s state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PdVSA).…

THE DUTCH Caribbean continues to have a weak reputation for fighting money laundering, and to a lesser extent terror financing, with the US 2017 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) highlighting weaknesses in its three autonomous jurisdictions. See https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/268024.pdf

Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten are ‘countries’ within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, with their own prime ministers, while less populous islands Bonaire, St Eustatius (Statia) and Saba are municipalities, with fewer powers vested in their island councils, and the Dutch government being responsible for enforcing international anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) norms.…

AML compliance departments are having to take an increasingly close look at any transactions involving Venezuela, as its authoritarian government attracts increasingly large numbers of international sanctions.

The European Union (EU) in June sanctioned 11 senior Venezuelan officials following the May re-election of President Nicolas Maduro in polls that the EU said were “neither free nor fair and…lacked any credibility…”

The sanctions – see https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32018D0901&from=EN…

THE VENEZUELAN government has launched a crypto-currency whose exchange rate is linked to global oil prices and which is backed by the country’s plentiful oil reserves.

The ‘Petro’ is the first state-backed virtual currency. Only the Venezuelan government can issue credits (it is ‘pre-mined’ in crypto-currency jargon).…

CHINA’S imposition of temporary safeguard duties to protect its sugar industry have been challenged at the World Trade Organisation (WTO), with sugar giant Brazil arguing Beijing’s tariffs break global commerce rules. In a signal that Brazil might be considering launching a disputes case against China, diplomats for the South American country told a WTO safeguards committee meeting that the duties broke the WTO agreement on safeguards and the general agreement on tariffs and trade (GATT). …

COLOMBIA’S oil and gas sector is stabilising after a crisis provoked by the plunge in global oil prices, but efforts to recover growth are being hampered by guerrilla attacks, corruption scandals and a popular backlash against the industry.

The crash in oil prices that began in 2014 has left the oil industry in Colombia in a precarious position, with only an estimated five years of commercially reliable reserves remaining, according to government calculations.…

The macro-economic slowdown experienced by Latin America in recent years has thrown the brakes on what had been impressive growth in the beauty and personal care sector since the turn of the century.

Much of the region is now looking for ways to stimulate the sector, tempering ambitions by aiming for more gradual growth rather than runaway success.…

Brazil’s tumbling textile exports to Venezuela may fall further if the country is suspended from the south American trading bloc, Mercosur next month. (December, 2016) 

According to World Bank data, Brazil’s textile and clothing exports to Venezuela peaked in 2011 at USD90.3 million but have been falling steadily ever since.…

South America’s cosmetics and personal care sector is looking to bounce back from a slowdown caused by the region’s macroeconomic troubles, but political pressures and regional trade alliances are driving individual country markets down divergent paths.

Over the last year, countries across the region have been buffeted by economic turmoil that has had a knock-on impact on the cosmetics sector.…

A DRAMATIC year for Pyrenees micro-state of Andorra has highlighted a debate over whether the US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has excessive power over financial institutions outside America.

The American financial intelligence unit (FIU) issued a Notice of Finding (NOF) in March 2015, saying Banca Privada d’Andorra (BPA), one of only five banks in the principality, was a financial institution of “primary money laundering concern.”…

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) chocolate sector stands to access supplies from the world’s third largest cocoa producer – Indonesia – should new talks to forge an EU-Indonesia trade deal prove successful. The country produced around 400,000 tonnes of cocoa in 2015.…

A decline in exports has ended the boom years for the Colombian cosmetics sector, but the country still holds high hopes of establishing itself as a major regional player.

Colombia’s cosmetics and personal care sector has been thriving for well over a decade, as economic growth has fuelled a strong domestic market and the country established itself as an export hub for the north of South America.…

MIRRORING how Spain is crawling out of its long recession, the country’s personal care product market is recovering. UK-based market researchers Euromonitor released a report last month concluding: “After years of decline in value terms, beauty and personal care finally saw a positive performance in Spain in 2015.”…

Colombia’s bio-based oils and fats sector is seeing industry profits siphoned off by criminal networks thanks to a contraband smuggling boom linked to illegal armed groups, organised crime and money laundering.
Contraband smuggling in Colombia has evolved into a sophisticated criminal business worth USD6 billion a year, according to the estimates of the Colombian National Tax and Customs Directorate (DIAN – Dirección de Impuestos y Aduanas Nacionales), and has become one of the principal threats facing national industries.…

THE LATIN American paint and coatings sector has been facing tough times in the past year, with sluggish overall economic performance depressing demand for the industry. Even, last summer’s World Cup football fiesta in Brazil, did not give the region’s largest market any motive to celebrate.…

A levy on air in the Venezuela’s largest airport, Maiquetía Simón Bolívar International Airport – on both domestic and foreign flights – caused such an uproar in the South American nation last year, it has since been repealed. According to the Venezuelan Airline Association (ALAV – Asociacion de lineas aereas de Venezuela), the ‘air-tax’ was doomed by the constant complaints and delays it caused.…

The request was highly unusual. But, when the ambassador of Haiti to Canada heard that Montreal’s Mirabel airport was to be demolished, his thoughts turned to his country’s Cap Haïtien airport, which was undergoing large-scale renovation. The doomed airport’s equipment, he figured, would be of more use in Haiti than on the scrap-heap.…

The smuggling of auto parts and vehicles into Colombia is a billion dollar trade that has long shackled the sector’s potential for growth. This contraband trade now finds itself squeezed between market forces on one side and a government clampdown on the other, but industry opinion is divided over whether it will be enough to halt the smuggling wave.…

The smuggling of auto parts and vehicles into Colombia is a billion dollar trade that has long shackled the sector’s potential for growth. This contraband trade now finds itself squeezed between market forces on one side and a government clampdown on the other, but industry opinion is divided over whether it will be enough to halt the smuggling wave.…

The Venezuelan government’s economic policies have created a boom in smuggling contraband meat and livestock to neighbouring Colombia. The trade is pushing down Colombian prices, putting consumers at risk and threatening the country’s hopes of becoming an export nation.

Between January and September this year, Colombia’s tax and customs police (Policia Fiscal y Aduanera – POLFA) made over USD1 million worth of seizures of meat and livestock in the form of 106 tonnes of beef, 4 tonnes of pork, 11 tonnes of chicken, 1,024 live cows, 243 pigs and 23,100 chickens.…

Transnational medicine mafias are exploiting the differences between the economic and healthcare models of socialist Venezuela and its free market neighbour Colombia to run a thriving trade in contraband pharmaceuticals.
Every year, networks of smugglers, corrupt officials, and shady businessmen move millions of dollars worth of contraband, expired and false drugs between the two countries, undermining the legal pharmaceutical sector and posing a grave health threat on both sides of the border.…

THE MARKET distorting economic policies of Venezuela’s government were supposed to help the country’s poor, but instead have created a boom in contraband smuggling into neighbouring Colombia, generating massive profits for organized crime, James Bargent reports.

CONTRABAND and smuggling permeate every aspect of economic life in the windswept Colombian border city of Cúcuta.…

Chinese construction firms have cornered plenty of business in Africa and Latin America, but they need upskilling to consolidate their position. Anyone who observes the queues of nervous young men lining up in the early morning in Beijing’s tree-lined Sanlitun diplomatic district will be in no doubt of the intensity of Chinese activity in Africa and Latin America.…

PRODUCTION at Venezuela state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) has slumped under mounting financial pressures, building during the past 15 years when revenues have been tapped by its socialist government to fund social programmes, diplomatic initiatives and other non-commercial policies.…

Even during the desperate economic times currently afflicting Venezuela, quality personal care products remain vital to its consumers: “Beauty is part of the culture,” said Jean Clauteaux, president of L’Oréal’s Venezuela section. Unlike neighbouring markets, he said a key characteristic of Venezuelan consumers is their strong demand for high-end products.…

Food manufacturers based in Venezuela have long struggled to supply the country’s oil-fuelled economy amidst strict government controls and shortages of many key industry inputs. And recent changes to the country’s currency regime could – say analysts and business leaders – intensify existing problems in the industry.…

THE COUNTRIES of Latin America may have strong cultural links, but their politics and economies have always varied and this is still the case with the paint and coatings sector. Whilst the whole region has experienced rising incomes over the past decade, this growth has been far from even and is currently under threat – for instance in Venezuela and Argentina, where interventionist governments have impeded trade.…

Venezuela’s economic woes are weighing heavily on its steel sector, which was already buckling from longstanding labour disputes and related financial problems.

The government in March effectively weakened its currency, the Venezuelan bolivar (VEF) by more than 80% against the US dollar for most transactions, unveiling a new currency market, to combat chronic shortages of key industrial inputs and consumer goods.…

VENEZUELA’S current financial turmoil is compounding problems for the meat industry, where cattlemen and traders alike say they have been severely buffeted by 15 years of socialist rule. “The sector has been bankrupted,” said Rubén Darío Barboza, president of the National Cattle Rancher’s Federation (FEDENAGA).…

Venezuela’s pharma sector is in critical condition as medicine manufacturers and traders are struggling to get their hands on hard currency, hindering them from importing medicines and manufacturing ingredients and materials. US dollars are crucial for most industries in the country’s import-reliant country, which earns most hard currency from oil exports.…

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is seeking special powers to combat the country’s deep-seated epidemic of corruption; this while the country is gripped with severe economic problems, marked by shortages of consumer goods and a lack of foreign currency vital to the business sector.…

DIGITAL innovation and exports dominated discussion at the 31st edition of Liber 2013, Spain’s leading book fair, which ended on Sunday (October 6) in Madrid after drawing 10,000 visitors, compared with 6,000 last year in Barcelona.

And while 450 exhibitors and 300-plus international buyers almost universally framed their comments in terms of recession, robust overseas sales and advances in e-publishing made for a slightly more positive mood than last year.…

VENEZUELA’S economic turmoil is plaguing its pharmaceutical sector leaving its medicine manufacturers struggling to meet market demand. Strict price controls and a shortage of foreign currency are contributing to vacant store shelves in pharmacies across the country. Manufacturers are dependent on imported inputs and lack the hard currency to pay for them.…

Venezuela’s cosmetic craze is renowned throughout the region. A beauty culture exists that – besides boosting sales – has produced six Miss Universe winners, six Miss World winners, six Miss Internationals and one Miss Earth. But despite the extra attention given to personal care in this Andean nation, residents have recently been hard pressed to find the most basic of necessities, such as soap and shampoo.…

‘LA TORRE PUIG,’ the 22-storey Puig Tower now being fitted out in the Plaza de Europa, of the Catalan capital, Barcelona, for Puig SL, the family owned fragrances and fashion firm, will be yet another landmark building for one of Europe’s most beautiful cities.…

WHILE it is hard to generalise about a region as diverse as Latin America, the truth is that many of its consumers are more concerned about personal appearance than is typical elsewhere in the world, and that is good news for the personal care product industry.…

Venezuela’s tobacco growers and manufacturers are looking to newly elected president Nicolás Maduro to offer them an olive branch after his predecessor Hugo Chávez levied costly taxes and imposed punishing legislation on the industry.

“We’re hoping for change,” said Enrique Moreno, President of the Venezuelan Tobacco Growers Association (AVENCULTA).”We…

After 14 years of Hugo Chávez’s self-styled “social revolution”, his death this March has left Venezuela’s business executives and accountants looking to a new president to jumpstart the country’s stumbling economy. Venezuela’s consumer prices soared and scarcities of basic consumer goods reached record highs last month as Nicolás Maduro was narrowly elected to replace his strongman predecessor.…

As Nicolás Maduro takes the helm as interim President of Venezuela, following the death of his strongman predecessor Hugo Chávez on Tuesday, auto dealers and manufacturers are asking whether the government will continue with policies that produced vehicles shortages and raised prices to exorbitant levels.…

As Nicólas Maduro takes the reins as Venezuelan interim president following the death of his strongman predecessor Hugo Chávez, educators and university administrators are hoping for a chance to repair tattered relations with their government.

“It could be an opportunity, we’re waiting for them to listen us,” said Rafael Escalona, academic vice rector at Caracas’ Simón Bolívar University (USB).…

Venezuela’s steel industry and investors are hoping the country’s Interim President Nicolás Maduro will break with the policies of his late predecessor Hugo Chávez, which have severely buffeted a once largely private and highly profitable sector.

“The disaster of the industry is a combination of policy and mismanagement,” explained analyst Robert Bottome, director of the Caracas-based VenEconomy Publications Group.…

IT has been called the world’s most powerful bank. In their book ‘China’s Superbank Debt, Oil and Influence – How China Development Bank [CDB] is Rewriting the Rules of Finance’, Bloomberg journalists Henry Sanderson and Michael Forsythe describe how the “CDB’s system of local government finance has helped lift millions out of poverty and shielded the country from recession”.…

BY PACIFICA GODDARD

Venezuela’s so-called ‘autonomous’ public universities are claiming they will receive only a fraction of the state funding they require in 2012 under a new government budget, currently being finalised in the country’s national assembly. The universities claim they are being singled out because of their independence – they are public, but not under the control of President Hugo Chavez’ leftist government.…

BY PACIFICA GODDARD

VENEZUELA: Student hunger strike ends with prison release

Pacifica Goddard

Venezuelan student protestors have agreed to end a hunger strike that they had been taking part in for the previous 23 days. Organised by opposition youth group Active Youth, Venezuela United (JAVU), the strike began on January 31, with only nine students but quickly grew until more than 80 people were participating.…

BY PACIFICA GODDARD

VENEZUELA: Student hunger strike ends with prison release

Pacifica Goddard

Venezuelan student protestors have agreed to end a hunger strike that they had been taking part in for the previous 23 days. Organised by opposition youth group Active Youth, Venezuela United (JAVU), the strike began on January 31, with only nine students but quickly grew until more than 80 people were participating.…

BY PACIFICA GODDARD

A decade ago, Latin America was considered to be one of the beer industry’s toughest markets, due to frequent bouts of economic uncertainty and political turmoil. But a lot has changed in the region since the year 2000, and recently instead of recoiling from this region, the biggest beer companies in the world have been fighting tooth and nail for shares of it.…

BY PACIFICA GODDARD

The carbonated soft drink segment has suffered recently in the United States and Europe, as consumers have become more health conscious and switched to less sugary alternatives, but in Latin America carbonated beverages have continued to perform well.…

BY PACIFICA GODDARD

INTRODUCTION

There are signs around the world that the textile market is beginning to recover from the global economic crisis, and developing markets will be leading that recovery. Asia is, of course, at the forefront, but many countries in Latin America have also weathered the crisis and have come out in a surprisingly decent position, with their dynamic textile and apparel industries well positioned for future expansion.…

BY PACIFICA GODDARD

LAST year in Latin America, British American Tobacco (BAT) and Philip Morris International (PMI), the region’s two dominant companies, battled to maintain profits through declining volumes. Overall, Latin America was profitable for both companies. For BAT, profits were mainly attributable to a strong performance in Brazil, and improved premium brand sales, however volumes sales declined throughout the region.…

BY PACIFICA GODDARD

The Venezuelan cigarette market experienced an overall decline in 2008 and the first half of 2009. In 2008, 11.95 billion sticks were sold, an 8.6% drop from the 13.07 billion sticks sold in 2007, according to the United Nations Statistics Division.…

BY JAMES FULLER

SMALL island states are always vulnerable in energy sustainability terms, but the growth in renewable energy technologies is giving them a better shot at security of supply. The Caribbean is a case in point, where green energy technologies are being explored across the region.…

BY PACIFICA GODDARD, in Caracas; MARVIN HOKSTAM, in Paramaribo, JAMES FULLER, in Port of Spain

IT may seem like a good thing for fuel retailers to be based in country that is sitting on a bounty of fuel reserves. But that is not necessarily the case, as many Latin American and Caribbean retailers can testify.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE SOCIALIST government of Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez has nationalised the country’s fuel distribution sector. It was the last part of the Venezuelan oil industry largely in private hands, being handled by dozens of companies, including some multinationals.…

BY PACIFICA GODDARD

CHINA’S entry into the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2002 and the recent end of quotas in the US and European markets have created gigantic changes in the textile industry worldwide, with developing markets like those in Latin America expected to suffer the most from these shifts.…

BY PACIFICA GODDARD, in Caracas

LATIN AMERICA has long been notorious for its high levels of corruption, especially through money laundering, bribery and the illicit drug trade. And although the recent years of relative stability and democratisation in the region have brought economic progress, this has also widened the opportunities for fraudulent activities and fuelled an increasing sophistication by which they are performed.…

BY RACHEL JONES, in Caracas

BIOGRAPHY

Olga Sandoval, 29, Licensed Nurse, University Hospital (Hospital Clinico Universitario), Caracas, Venezuela

Nursing License, Central University of Venezuela (UCV). Worked for two years in the San Roman Urological Clinic and seven years at the University Hospital, including one year of intensive care training.…

BY RACHEL JONES, in Caracas

FOLLOWING the late-November OPEC summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez visited Tehran to discuss joint ventures over oil refining and then chuckle with his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, over the weakened US dollar.…

BY RACHEL JONES, in Caracas

VENEZUELA’S Orinoco Belt-which follows the line of the Orinoco River in the south of the country’s Guárico, Anzoátegui and Monagas states-is home to some of the biggest reserves of crude oil in the world: 77.2 billion barrels of conventional proved reserves, and about 270 billion barrels of recoverable heavy oil.…

BY RACHEL JONES, in Caracas

THE OSCAR Machado Zuloaga Airport (SVCS), (NOTE – SPELLING IS CORRECT) also known as the Caracas Airport, sits on a mesa (flat-topped hill) in Charallave, a 45-minute drive from Venezuela’s capital of Caracas. The privately owned airport, flanked by manicured boulevards, provides a tranquil home for about 500 small planes.…

BY RACHEL JONES, in Caracas

A NUMBER of factors have contributed to a booming Latin American market in soap, perfume and cosmetics – most importantly, regional economic growth and a healthy overall GDP. Hair care is the region’s biggest seller, but an increase in life expectancy has created a growing demand for skin care products, especially those related to anti-aging and sun protection.…

BY RACHEL JONES, in Caracas
VENEZUELA’S economy, fueled by its vast oil wealth, has grown by about 9% in 2006, making it one of the fastest-growing in Latin America, resulting in increased consumption and production of paints and coatings. However, the boom has not been all good news for the sector, it has also caused problems related to inflation and currency controls, specifically in regards to the importation of primary materials for production.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Finance Corporation (IFC), of the World Bank, is to lend US$24 million to Vinccler, a Venezuelan oil and gas exploration/production company. A wholly owned subsidiary of Petrofalcon, it will use the money to increase production and stage technical tests.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Finance Corporation (IFC), of the World Bank, is lending US$105 million to Petrobras Energía Venezuela (PEV), owned by Argentina’s Pecom Energía, for developing PEV’s four Venezuelan oil fields. The IFC said the loan was “critical to the sustainability and expansion of PEV.”…

Keith Nuthall
THE VENEZUELAN government has notified the World Trade Organisation about how it intends to implement the third tranche of its liberalisation commitments under the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing. Caracas said its new quota-free list of goods would include additional products, accounting for at least 18 per cent of Venezuela’s 1990 textile and clothing imports.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE VENEZUELAN government has informed the WTO of a safeguards duty investigation into imports of U sections of iron or steel, hot-drawn or extruded, of a height of between 80 mm and 120 mm, and of I sections of iron or steel, hot-drawn or extruded, of a height of between 80 mm and 140 mm.…