Finance Minister Alí Rodríguez Araque now says he doesn't rule out "modifying" his 2009 budget during the course of next year. The budget continues to move forward at the National Assembly even though economists warn it's been badly overtaken by events.
The minister argues that the law means he can't modify the budget now that it's gone to the legislature. Skeptics say he would however be allowed to withdraw the Bill and submit a new one, and they say he should do precisely that.
Instead, the finance committee at the Assembly on Thursday began a second discussion of the Bill, which has already been passed in its original form on a first debate in the full chamber. Critics claim that the committee is wasting its time. They say that the budget could be drastically rewritten via a flood of amendments during debate in the chamber.
Instead, Rodríguez Araque continues to insist it's still too early to alter the plan. He's holding to the line that Venezuela will get through the crisis "relatively comfortably". Economists argue that the country's economic reliance on oil exports, which account for about half gross domestic product (GDP) and at least four-fifths of overall export earnings – could make it more not less vulnerable to the vagaries of world oil markets.
The head of the finance committee, Deputy Ricardo Sanguino of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), says legislators will spend some days debating the Bill. The plan is to have it cleared through a second debate and a final vote by December 11. Then it will go to President Hugo Chávez for signature.
The trouble with the Bill, economists say, it is that it's based on the assumption that the price of Venezuelan oil will average $60 a barrel next year but the price has already withered to barely two-thirds of that.
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