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Economic Pressure Groups and Policy-Making in Venezuela: The Case of FEDECAMARAS Reconsidered

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2022

René Salgado
René Salgado*
Affiliation:
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
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This article will focus on the interactions between the Venezuelan government and FEDECAMARAS, the umbrella organization of most Venezuelan private-sector groups, while a strategic policy was being formulated and implemented that FEDECAMARAS regarded as seriously detrimental to the interests of the Venezuelan private sector. This policy was developed after the official devaluation of the Venezuelan bolívar on 18 February 1983 and consisted of two stages: first, the government refused to supply foreign currency at the rate of 4.3 bolívares to the dollar, the predevaluation rate (PDR), for any foreign debts contracted by private enterprises prior to 18 February, a decision that forced many debtor companies to obtain foreign currency at the floating rate. This rate increased from approximately 8 bolívares to the dollar in March 1983 to some 25 to the dollar in late 1986. Second, the government imposed a price freeze and then price controls. This policy, which was simultaneously regulatory and redistributive, was vehemently opposed by FEDECAMARAS. Yet the results of the organization's efforts indicate that its actual influence has been overstated.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , 1987 , pp. 91 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

∗

I wish to thank three anonymous LARR reviewers and Alberto Mansueti of Compañía Gallup in Caracas for their helpful comments on an earlier draft. Also, sincere thanks to Professor Kenneth M. Coleman of the University of Kentucky, visiting professor at the Universidad Simón Bolívar in Venezuela when the draft was being revised. He made many useful suggestions on style and substance.

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