Word: perez
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...everyone was so enthusiastic. Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez called the new proposals "encouraging" but only "very timid steps." Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, warned against looking for a "magic elixir" to solve the crisis. In a speech before a conference on Third World debt in Washington, Volcker explained, "If not well managed, a process of debt reduction clearly could be hazardous to the health of debtors and creditors alike...
...inauguration, President Carlos Andres Perez warned Venezuelans that hard times were ahead for their heavily indebted, oil-exporting country. Even he had no idea how hard -- or how soon. Last week the citizens of one of Latin America's most stable democracies were in shock after a social explosion that tore apart downtown Caracas, the capital, and shattered the peace in at least 16 other cities. Government-imposed austerity measures had ignited a three-day free-for-all of rioting, looting and killing that left an estimated 300 people dead, 2,000 injured and another 2,000 in jail...
Venezuela had not seen such mayhem since 1958, when a popular insurrection toppled dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez and ushered in democracy. Overnight, Venezuelans faced martial-law restrictions, including a 6 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew. When the riots ended, severe food shortages in the capital threatened to stir more disquiet. The most important victim of the upheaval was probably President Perez himself, who had begun his second term in office (the first was from 1974 to 1979) with a huge margin of popularity. That goodwill was suddenly forgotten when the rattled leader failed to stop the violence with a rambling...
...Perez, who has long inveighed against his continent's onerous financial burden, had finally found austerity unavoidable. Venezuela owes foreign creditors, largely U.S. commercial banks, about $33 billion. In the 1970s, when the country was awash with petroleum revenues, the government that Perez headed spent lavishly on social-welfare projects and industrial schemes. But as oil prices took a dive in the 1980s, so did the economy, which earned 90% of export revenues from petroleum. Hard-pressed for cash, Venezuela last Dec. 31 suspended payments for 90 days on the bulk of its foreign obligations...
...credits through 1991. Among other things, the agreement promised an end to Venezuelan subsidies on an array of products, including imported raw materials and gasoline (at 13 cents per gal., perhaps the cheapest in the world). Exempted from the price hikes were 18 staples, including bread, rice and chicken. Perez also promised to raise fees for government-provided goods and services and to allow the bolivar to float downward on international currency markets, a move that would boost import prices...