First in Line
Who clears Venezuela's arrears to the IDB and CAF, and with what money; what the World Bank's conditional $5 billion and the $17 billion headline really mean; and how senior new money changes the envelope that bondholders, award creditors and suppliers are left to share
On Tuesday night, at the close of the industrialists' congress in Caracas, the acting president said Venezuela is in advanced talks with the multilateral system for $17 billion over five years. Two weeks earlier, six people told a wire service the government was weighing a bridge loan from Qatar to clear what it owes the Inter-American Development Bank. The World Bank has said, on the record, that it is waiting for exactly that before it lends a dollar. None of this is the restructuring. All of it decides what the restructuring is worth.