CARACAS: Panama could accept oil or natural gas from Venezuela as payment for the more than $1 billion in dollar debt owed to Panamanian companies, Vice President and Foreign Minister Isabel De Saint Malo de Alvarado said.
In a meeting with members of the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in Panama, De Saint Malo said that what Venezuela owes should not even be termed “debt, but rather a lack of availability of foreign exchange” to honor its commitments to Panamanian companies for more than two years.
“All options are on the table,” the vice president said, adding that Venezuela has repeatedly showed “signs of a firm commitment to resolving the situation.”
De Saint Malo did not indicate the amount owed by Venezuelan importers and said the business leaders of the Colon Free Trade Zone and Venezuelan officials “are weeding through the information that’s available to establish the amounts and the companies.”
“The deeper issue we’ve been working on is how to make that hard currency available,” she said.
The debt owed by Venezuelan importers to Panamanian companies, including Copa Airlines, pharmaceutical firms and companies of the Colon Free Trade Zone exceeds $1 billion, the Panamanian Trade and Industry Ministry said in October.
Under strict currency controls in place in Venezuela for more than a decade, the leftist government is to distribute dollars to importers at one of three official exchange rates and also allow foreign airlines that sell tickets to Venezuelans in pesos to convert them into dollars.
Petroleum-rich Venezuela, which relies on crude sales for the vast majority of its hard-currency reserves, has been hard hit financially by the recent sharp drop in global oil prices.
Panama is prepared to “seek different, more creative options that could make it easier for the Venezuelan government to make that hard currency available,” De Saint Malo told the foreign correspondents.
