Venezuela shuffles economic team

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro addresses lawmakers in front of National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello during the presentation of his annual state of the nation at the National Assembly in Caracas.

Reuters/Caracas

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro named an army general as the new finance minister in a reshuffle of his economic team and said there would be no currency devaluation this year despite a soaring black market for dollars.

The cabinet changes do not suggest any major shift in the country’s state-dominated economy, as the new economic team retains many of the same policy-makers that helped the late Hugo Chavez advance the Opec nation’s drive toward socialism.

Venezuela in 2013 saw slowing economic growth and soaring inflation that Maduro blames on an opposition-backed “economic war” but that critics call the result of decaying price and currency controls now widely linked to corruption.

Maduro tasked new finance minister Rodolfo Marco with “building a new financial model that can allow for all these investments we need, that will allow the expansion of a financial system at the service of the country.”

Marco, who participated in the failed 1992 coup that thrust Chavez to fame and did jail time with him afterwards, previously held the post of public banks minister, which will now be merged with the finance ministry. He rose quickly through the ranks of government officials after Chavez personally called on him to bring order to a state-run bank following a corruption scandal, said a source who knows the incoming finance minister.

Pleased with his work, Chavez later put him at the helm of Banco de Venezuela after it was purchased from Spain’s Banco Santander, and later created a ministerial post for state run-banks that grew in number amid a wave of nationalisations.

“He’s held major posts for a long time and has not been tainted (by corruption),” said a source, who asked not to be identified. “He’s also good at negotiating and has good relations in the bank sector.”