San Francisco Frontiers - Venezuela moves to boost economy, amid anguish over pace of prisoner release

Interim president Delcy Rodriguez confirmed that her country had received $300 million from Washington's sale of Venezuelan crude and said she would use it to prop up the bolivar against the dollar.

The dollar is Venezuela's de facto currency, legalized by ousted leader Nicolas Maduro in 2019 to fight hyperinflation.

A six-year-old US embargo on Venezuelan oil has led to a shortage of greenbacks, however, causing the dollar's value to rocket.

On the black market, dollars have traded recently for up to 100 percent more than the official rate.

Rodriguez, who succeeded Maduro after his capture by US forces in a bombing raid on Caracas on January 3, said the new oil revenues would be used to "stabilize" the foreign exchange market.

She added that doing so would help "protect the income and purchasing power of our workers."

US President Donald Trump backed Maduro's former deputy Rodriguez to lead the country, provided she gives US oil majors access to Venezuela's rich oil reserves.

- Reforming investment laws -

Rodriguez has been trying to appease him without alienating pro-Maduro hardliners in her administration.

On Monday, parliament, which is controlled by her brother Jorge Rodriguez, announced plans to reform 29 laws, including on foreign investment in the oil sector.

Currently, foreign companies are only allowed to operate in joint ventures with state-owned oil firm PDVSA, which insists on holding a majority.

"Foreign investment needs to be protected and profitable," Jorge Rodriguez argued.

In a signal of the government's intent to work with US oil companies, Delcy Rodriguez on Monday appointed a US-educated banker to head the country's main investment agency.

Calixto Ortega, a former head of the country's central bank, was previously posted as a diplomat to Houston, the city at the center of the US oil refining industry.

Ortega replaced Alex Saab, a Colombian-born Venezuelan seen as a frontman for Maduro, who was sacked as industry minister last week.

Trump claims that Washington effectively runs Venezuela since Maduro was snatched from his hideout on a Caracas military base and whisked to a New York jail.

He picked Rodriguez over popular opposition leader, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado, to lead the country's transition.

On Tuesday, the Republican leader said he was still in talks with Machado, who presented him with her Nobel medal -- which he openly coveted -- at the White House last week.

"Maybe we can get her involved in some way. I'd love to be able to do that," he told reporters in Washington.

Machado, who is still touring the US capital, insisted Tuesday there could be no real change in Venezuela until all political prisoners are released.

- 'Where are they'? -

Rodriguez has begun to slowly release some of the estimated 800 political prisoners languishing in the country's penitentiaries.

Several key Maduro opponents still remain behind bars, however.

On Tuesday, the families of 200 prisoners demonstrated outside the prosecutor's office in Caracas to demand proof of life of their loved ones.

Nancy Quinones told AFP she had gone without news of her son, serving a 24-year sentence for his alleged role in a coup attempt, for five months and 18 days.

"Where are they?" one of the placards waved by the demonstrators read.

burs-cb/ksb

B.Turner--SFF