Venezuela to Tighten Control Over Oil Co.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:47 a.m. ET
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- President Hugo Chavez, battling a strike that has paralyzed the world's fifth-biggest oil exporter, will restructure the state oil company to tighten government control and eliminate dissent, the energy minister said.
In a nationally televised speech, Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez said the Caracas headquarters of Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. would be mostly dismantled. The company's administration would be moved to two centers of operation in eastern and western Venezuela.
Ramirez didn't say how many of the 7,000 workers at the headquarters will lose their jobs, but most are currently on strike. The government says it will fire strikers -- some 35,000 are off the job -- and already has dismissed high-ranking executives.
Ramirez, who told reporters last week of the plan to split the company, said a new board ``with a more strategic vision'' will soon be appointed. The company will focus more on production of crude, gas and refining, he said.
Chavez long has said he wanted to restructure the company, which he has called a ``state within a state'' run by privileged executives. Chavez wants to increase government revenues from the company.
``We need a PDVSA much more efficient ... and not as an oil enclave, but a company at the service of the nation,'' Ramirez said. Bureaucracy in Caracas increases operating costs by $1 billion a year, he added....
The strike has been most effective in Venezuela's oil industry, which provides half of government income and 80 percent of export revenue. Venezuela is a top supplier of crude to the United States, and the strike has helped send international oil prices above $30.
Company activity is seen as gradually picking up but is still well below normal. Crude output is estimated at around 400,000 barrels per day, compared to the pre-strike level of 3 million barrels a day. Exports, normally 2.5 million barrels a day, are at 500,000 barrels a day....
Chavez has named company managers Felix Rodriguez and Luis Marin to run operations in the east and west....
Tens of thousands of people marched on the offices of the federal tax agency to support a tax boycott.
The government may have to cut the $25 billion 2003 budget by up to 10 percent, Finance Minister Tobias Nobrega said. Taxes were supposed to pay for a third of the budget. Oil exports were supposed to pay for half.
<http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Venezuela-Strike.html> *****
***** January 7, 2003
Venezuela Strikers in Tax Revolt, Chavez Defiant
By REUTERS
Filed at 9:03 p.m. ET
CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Foes of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, marching in their thousands in Caracas, tore up income-tax forms on Tuesday as they added a tax revolt to a five-week-old strike crippling the nation's crucial oil exports.
But the leftist former paratrooper, who survived a coup in April, vowed to resist what he called their ``economic war'' to oust him as president of the world's No. 5 oil exporter.
Waving national flags and blowing whistles, the anti-Chavez demonstrators marched to government tax offices in east Caracas on the 37th day of an opposition strike aimed at forcing the populist leader to resign and call early elections.
The grueling shutdown has strangled Venezuela's oil output and shipments, jolting world oil markets and bleeding government coffers of millions of dollars a day of oil income.
``We are not going to pay taxes until this government goes,'' 52-year-old housewife Belkis Soto told Reuters as she took part in the march. Many protesters, who include middle class professionals, housewives and students, waved tax declaration forms, which they ripped up outside the tax offices.
The opposition, which has accompanied the strike with almost daily street protests, has called on individuals and firms to stop paying taxes, whether income or sales taxes.
But Chavez, who led a coup attempt in 1992 and was elected president six years later, is refusing to quit.
``We are in a situation of economic and political war because that is what the opposition wanted. ... Let's give them war then,'' he told reporters in west Caracas.
Earlier, speaking at a school, he warned his striking opponents their refusal to pay taxes was against the law. ``They've tried to break the oil industry ... now they're trying to break the national treasury so there is no money,'' he said.
Tax authorities say offenders face fines and prison terms ranging from six months to seven years.
As a result of the strike, the government is reducing by half its original 2003 growth forecast of 2.5 percent to 3.5 percent. It has said it will announce tough belt-tightening measures to offset the strike losses.
``READY FOR THE WORST''
But Chavez seems determined to fight back. He purged the armed forces of opponents following the short-lived coup against him in April. He is doing the same with the strike-hit state oil giant PDVSA, the motor of the Venezuelan economy.
``I'm ready for the worst and on any front, we'll defeat the enemies of the nation,'' he said.
Despite calls from some opponents for the armed forces to topple Chavez, or at least refuse to obey him, Venezuela's army commander told Reuters on Monday the army would not intervene in the crisis and backed a negotiated political solution.
Tensions have been high since clashes on Friday between pro- and anti-Chavez protesters, in which two supporters of the president were shot and killed. The deaths triggered a storm of accusations between the government and its foes....
<http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-venezuela.html> ***** -- Yoshie
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