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Jorge Familiar, World Bank vice president for Latin America and
the Caribbean, told Reuters in an interview on Monday that the
bank has had no engagement with Venezuela since it paid off past
loans in 2008 under the late former President Hugo Chavez.
But Familiar said the bank's officials have been intensely
watching growing shortages of food and medicine this year as the
oil exporting country sinks deeper into recession, sparking
violent protests.
Familiar said that the multilateral lender would be ready to
develop an engagement program for Venezuela, but it would need
to be "invited" to do so by President Nicolas Maduro's
government.
"As with all shareholders of the institution, if the situation
were to arise, we would be ready to engage with Venezuela,"
Familiar said. "What we would need is for them to call us."
On Tuesday, Familiar said that there would be many steps
required before a World Bank loan to Venezuela could be
discussed, including re-establishing a dialogue with government
officials and providing technical assistance and analysis.
"We are far off from lending to Venezuela," he said. "We could
have a conversation that would start on the analytical front."
Last year, the World Bank approved $2.5 billion in new credit
lines for Peru to backstop the country's financial plans amid
falling revenues as commodity prices slumped.
The credit lines carry reform requirements under World Bank
programs to support improvements in public expenditure
management, public education and to streamline the formation of
new private companies.
Familiar said Peru was meeting benchmarks for that program.
Venezuela was the outlier on Tuesday when the World Bank
released its latest economic forecasts for Latin America and the
Caribbean, predicting that regional growth would turn positive,
to 1.5 percent in 2017 as recessions end in Brazil and
Argentina, after a regional decline of about 1 percent in 2016.
The World Bank forecast that Venezuela's growth would fall by
3.1 percent in 2017 after a spectacular 12 percent drop in 2016.
It forecast that Venezuela would start to recover by 2018, with
0.6 percent growth amid firmer oil prices, but lag far behind
regional growth of about 2.5 percent for 2018.
(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Dan Grebler)
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