Weekly Report - 1 November 2005

VENEZUELA | Tax clampdown hits PDVSA. Seniat, the tax collection office, showed that it was not only chasing private oil companies for tax irregularities. On 26 October it fined the state-owned PDVSA-Gas Bs500bn (US$233m) and ordered a two-day punitive closure for irregularities in the payment of the value-added tax and related bookkeeping. Seniat chief José Vielma underlined that the closure was the harshest such measure since the launch of his 'zero evasion' drive. In the event, however, PDVSA-Gas was spared the closure because its president, energy minister Rafael Ramí­rez, ordered the immediate payment of the sum demanded by Seniat.

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