Nicolas Maduro orders the end of Cencoex

Nicolás Maduro signed a decree on Thursday ordering the liquidation of the National Center for Foreign Trade (Cencoex), an institution he created in 2013 to continue the administration of exchange control, established in the nation since 2003.

“I am signing the decree by which the liquidation of the National Center for Foreign Trade must proceed, we are turning the page, I myself created Cencoex, when I created it I was transforming Cadivi (National Commission for the Administration of Foreign Exchange),” said the president in a televised event.

Maduro said that in the last 20 years, thanks to President Hugo Chavez (1999-2013), a “significant part of the oil wealth” of the country with the largest proven crude oil reserves in the world was invested in technological and industrial development and in “the formulation of productive projects.”

Now, after the crisis that hit the economy between 2013 and 2019, he believes that the “anxieties” of the past, “the product of a rentier model that bled the country dry,” have been overcome.

“I am proceeding to sign the liquidation of Cencoex and we are going to move on to the new thing, which is to produce for export,” he reiterated.

In Venezuela, there was an exchange control, imposed in 2003 under the Chávez government, which left the monopoly on the purchase and sale of foreign currency in the hands of the State through Cadivi and, later, Cencoex.

Until 2018, when the government began to dismantle this system, citizens and companies had to turn to the State to access foreign currency, which for years was offered at preferential prices and well below market value.

Venezuelans have unofficially adopted the use of foreign currency, mostly dollars, to protect their income after the period of hyperinflation that Venezuela experienced from 2017 to 2021, when the value of the bolivar was reduced, as well as the confidence of citizens in the local currency..