VENEZUELA DRIVES BANKERS CRAZY
Ask any international debt rescheduler which Latin American country has given him most grief in the last four years and the answer is likely to be Venezuela.
Argentina can be obstinate at times. Peru's Alan Garcia revels in his reputation as the enfant terrible of Third World debt. And Mexico taxes the ingenuity of its lenders to the full.
But nobody has driven banks to distraction like Venezuela. "They're just a dreadful bunch. I can't understand why anyone would want to do business with them unless they had to,' one seasoned rescheduler moaned.
The bitterness flows from 3 1/2 years of arduous negotiations over a multi-year debt rescheduling agreement. On numerous occasions since Venezuela first called a standstill in March 1983 on repayments of the $25 billion in foreign debt owed by the public sector, bankers thought they had a deal.
But hitches always cropped up, with the result that Venezuela remains the only major Latin debtor still to implement a rescheduling agreement.
"These guys have cut deals and before the ink's dry they've said that's no longer where they're at,' the rescheduler said.
The reasons for the foot-dragging could fill a book--a lack of political will in Caracas; arguments over the role of the International Monetary Fund; recurring delays in remitting interest payments; bureaucratic snarl-ups in handling $14 billion in private sector debt; a desire to wait and see the terms of Mexico's rescheduling deal; and the government's demand last autumn for a contingency clause in the event of major changes in such factors as oil prices or interest rates.