Some of Venezuela’s state companies will be partially privatized and open to private investment. They were nationalized a few years ago by Hugo Chávez.
Nicolás Maduro announced that Venezuela will open state-owned companies to private investors on the stock market from May 16. He justified that those companies need equity and technology for their development.
“We are going to put on sale between 5 to 10% of the shares of several state companies,” said Nicolás Maduro on Wednesday at the state television Venezolana de Televisión.
“We need equity for the development of all state companies, we need technologies, we need new markets,” he justified.
Mr. Maduro mentioned that companies like CANTV and Movilnet, the state-run telecom companies, Pequiven, the national petrochemical company, and other businesses and joint ventures in oil and gas, would sell shares via a capital increase.
They will be available on the Caracas Stock Exchange and other Venezuelan markets, and available to domestic and international investors.
Last December, the non-profit Transparencia Venezuela identified 33 state entities that the regime was negotiating to hand over to private companies.
Some Venezuelan companies will be partially privatized, like CANTV, while they were actually nationalized by former president Hugo Chávez a few years ago.
The country has been suffering from severe economic and political crises in past years that forced millions of Venezuelans to leave their country.
