PDVSA Starts Bank Transfers on April Bond Payments
Venezuela's state oil company, PDVSA, said on Thursday it had "started bank transfers" to make its first April bond payments, outlays that will further squeeze the already cash-strapped business amid a deep recession.
The oil-rich South American nation faces payments of nearly $3 billion in April, mostly on bonds issued by PDVSA. Most of that is due on Wednesday as PDVSA's April 2017 5.25 percent note matures.
"On the 4th of April of this year, bank transfers for interest payments on PDVSA 2027 bonds ... and PDVSA 2037 bonds were started," PDVSA said in a statement tweeted by its president, Eulogio Del Pino.
President Nicolas Maduro's government has pledged to keep paying bondholders, bashing default talk as a Wall Street plot to sabotage his Socialist administration.
"PDVSA demonstrates its robust productive capacity, today strengthened and fully operational as it pays interest to bondholders," the statement added.
Low oil prices and a grueling recession that has millions skipping meals have worsened PDVSA's financial position in recent years.
Caracas-based PDVSA has been particularly affected in the last weeks by unforeseen spending on emergency oil and fuel imports to stem a nationwide gasoline shortage.
Venezuela is negotiating financial help from Russian oil major Rosneft to complete the payments, two market sources and a government source familiar with the talks told Reuters last week.
And Venezuela's central bank is also negotiating financing with a New York-based investment fund by using PDVSA bonds as collateral to help meet the payments, a lawmaker said on Monday.
Reporting by Deisy Buitrago
