Interviewed for: "Curaçao: Choppy Waters"

"Curaçao: Choppy Waters"
By: Al Emid
Global Finance
December 9, 2019
Originally published: https://www.gfmag.com/magazine/december-2019/curacao-choppy-waters

Curaçao enjoys income from multiple sources but is buffeted by troubles spilling out of Venezuela.

Curaçao boasts an oil industry, a sizable tourism sector and status as a corporate tax haven. Yet the island nation, an autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, is under severe economic pressure—partially due to the political crisis and economic collapse in Venezuela, its close neighbor to the south.

Atop the list of problems: Isla Curaçao, the state-owned oil refinery, needs a new operator. The current contract with Petroleos de Venezuela runs out at the end of 2019. In December, PDVSA won a temporary extension of its contract to last up to one year while the refinery continues looking for a new operator.

While the refinery had received an exemption from US sanctions on Venezuela, production has dwindled drastically due to lack of crude from Venezuela, says Wilder Alejandro Sanchez, a Peru-based analyst who follows Curaçao.



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