Venezuela To Nationalize Utilities
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said he would nationalize utilities, including the biggest phone company, and scrap central bank independence as he moves toward transforming the country into a socialist state.
Shares of CA Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela plunged, and the currency fell 14.2%, after Mr. Chavez said he would also ask congress for authority to make law through executive order, a power he held for a year during 2000 and 2001. Chavez reiterated that he would seek to end foreign control of heavy- crude refineries in the Orinoco region.
“All those sectors that are so strategic, such as electric power, everything that was privatized will be nationalized,” Mr. Chavez said yesterday in a televised speech in Caracas. “We will recover the strategic means of production. Cantv, let’s nationalize it.”
