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Strategies & Market Trends : World Outlook -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Les H who wrote (48692)	11/3/2025 2:53:55 PM
From: Les H	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 48760

Nobel Peace Prize winner says Venezuela has a ‘unique’ $1.7 trillion opportunity to privatize over 500 companies and reverse socialist ‘disaster’ Story by Nick Lichtenberg Weeks after winning the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for her decades-long fight to restore democracy to Venezuela, opposition leader María Corina Machado is calling for what she describes as the most ambitious economic transformation in the nation’s history—a sweeping privatization aimed at reversing the policies of President Nicolás Maduro and what she calls “the disaster this socialist system has wrought.” Appearing virtually on the Fortune Global Forum stage in Riyadh, Machado, currently in hiding from the Maduro regime, unveiled a bold vision to rebuild Venezuela’s shattered economy through large-scale private investment. “Venezuela will be the single biggest economic opportunity for decades to come in this region,” she told Fortune’s Diane Brady at the forum’s 2025 edition. “We’re talking about an opportunity, business opportunity, of more than $1.7 trillion. This is unique.” Machado has floated the $1.7 trillion figure before, an estimate produced by her economic advisory team. The privatization blueprint At the core of Machado’s plan is a rapid and transparent privatization process. She estimates that more than 500 enterprises were “taken by the regime, confiscated, destroyed, but the infrastructure is there.” She pledged strict oversight and rule of law from “day one,” aiming to lure investors back with stability and fiscal incentives. She pledged open markets and an approach that would be “absolutely strict” in terms of rule of law and transparency, reminding Brady that Venezuela is currently in last place in terms of rule of law. To take one example, the World Justice Project recently ranked Venezuela No. 142, out of 142 countries. She also pointed out that Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world and the eighth largest natural gas reserve globally, “but currently our people don’t even have gas even to cook. That’s a disaster.” Bloomberg reported in December 2024 that Venezuelans were turning to firewood and even their own furniture to cook after an explosion at a propane plant wiped out most of the country’s transmission. “The socialist system has rotted,” she said. Restoring the oil and gas sectors, she added, will demand both foreign capital and the return of Venezuela’s diaspora. “Our human talent, our people, our diaspora … is willing to come back as soon as Venezuela goes to work hard.” Nobel Prize winner says Venezuela has a ‘unique’ $1.7 trillion opportunity to privatize over 500 companies and reverse socialist ‘disaster’ Sounds like the run up to Iraq in 2002 when the Exxon CEO said they were running out of places to invest since many of the countries were on US sanctions and were turning to other countries to develop their oil. Saddam had contracted with Russia, China, and France, three permanent members of the UN security council in the hopes of ending the sanctions. Post-war Iraqi oil development was handed over to US' Exxon, UK's BP, and the Netherlands' Royal Dutch Shell. Eventually, much of it became controlled by Chinese companies.