Venezuela's Constitutional President Nicolás Maduro. Photo: Federico Parra, AFP.
After showing the letter that Venezuela’s Constitutional head of state, Nicolás Maduro, sent to the director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva, on March 15, 2020, requesting access to US $5 billion to which Venezuela was entitled to in order to address the COVID-19 pandemic, the acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, reported this Tuesday that she spoke with the IMF to access those Venezuelan assets.
“Today, I spoke with the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Dr. Kristalina Georgieva, and I told her about the need for Venezuela to access its Special Drawing Rights. We have $5 billion available at the International Monetary Fund so that we can rebuild vital infrastructure… This state also needs it, and we have very clear projects; we know what to do with those funds,” she said during an event in Falcón state, Venezuela, as part of the national movement to demand the lifting of illegal US sanctions.
Within the framework of the unilateral coercive measures (euphemistically referred to as “sanctions”) that the United States and its vassals have maintained against Venezuela since March 2015, Venezuela has seen many of its funds blocked—not only by the IMF but also by other organizations and various nations, a reality that the acting president recalled this Tuesday.
“We have assets frozen in other countries, (such as) gold in the United Kingdom,” she recalled. These funds would be destined “for public services; we can also use them to provide macroeconomic stability to our economy, for the stability of the currency and the exchange system. Recovering workers’ income is the responsible way forward.”
Referring to the IMF director, she commented that “I explained to her clearly what Venezuela wants to use those assets for.”
“We can never give up,” stated Rodríguez. “The lesson is that one can never falter or surrender. Whenever the supreme objective is our Republic, our homeland, and our people, we must be here in the front line, for the struggle, for the battle, and for the defense of our supreme interests.”
Recovering funds from the IMF was also part of the agreements reached during dialogues with Venezuela’s internal opposition in 2020.
“In the various dialogues that have taken place between the Bolivarian sector (e.g., the United Socialist Party of Venezuela) and the Venezuelan opposition, in Barbados, Mexico, and Qatar, several agreements were reached, including a partial agreement for access to the Special Drawing Rights of the International Monetary Fund ,” Rodríguez noted. “There were agreements which, unfortunately, were not respected.”
When the IMF refused to recognize Venezuela’s Constitutional government in 2019, following the US recognition of the puppet Juan Guaidó, the IMF also stripped the country of its Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), a system created by the IMF in 1969 to provide liquidity to global economies and offer additional reserves to member countries in times of crisis. In 2020, as the world grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic, the international organization prevented Venezuela from accessing US $5 billion to which it was entitled that year. The IMF’s actions were repeatedly repudiated by the Constitutional president, Nicolás Maduro, amid the hardships caused by the virus.
For example, on February 28, 2022, during his speech at the 49th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, when the world was going through the COVID-19 pandemic, President Maduro protested that the International Monetary Fund, “due to pressure from the United States government, refuses to provide Venezuela $5 billion in Special Drawing Rights , which we are entitled to, to fight the pandemic and for the rights of the people.”
Six years of fighting for funds from the IMF
On Thursday, April 16, 2026, Venezuela and the International Monetary Fund announced that relations between the two entities had been re-established. Since then, the acting head of state, Delcy Rodríguez, has insisted that the nation is still fighting to gain access to the $5 billion loan.
On Friday, April 17, Acting President Rodríguez said that “no debt program is planned” with the IMF.
On Sunday, April 19, Delcy Rodríguez stated that these resources are necessary to restore and maintain vital infrastructure, including electricity, water, and hospitals and “to invest immediately in strategic production of oil, gas, [and] petrochemicals, which will mean income for our workers, to provide stability to our international reserves and macroeconomic balances that allow us to sustain the national economy.”
(DiarioVEA) by Yuleidys Hernández Toledo
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
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