Venezuela Company & Beneficial Ownership Directory

Analysis

What this data actually tells you about Venezuela

Venezuela’s economy remains one of the world’s most distressed, dominated by oil. The IMF’s April 2026 World Economic Outlook projects nominal GDP of roughly $111.3 billion and GDP growth of about 3% in 2025 and 4% in 2026, driven substantially by oil-production recovery. GDP per capita was approximately $3,736-$3,740 in 2025, a fraction of pre-crisis (2013) levels near $12,000, reflecting the cumulative 75-80% real GDP contraction Venezuela suffered from 2013-2021, among the largest peacetime economic collapses on record. The currency is the bolívar (VES, “bolívar digital” following the October 2021 redenomination). Inflation remains extreme: full-year 2025 inflation reached approximately 475%, the world’s highest national rate that year, far exceeding the IMF’s own prior forecast of 269.9%. It worsened into 2026: year-on-year inflation was 594.8% in January 2026 and 617.9% in February 2026, with some independent trackers citing 576% year-on-year by July 2026. The official central-bank exchange rate moved from 52.02 VES/USD in early January 2025 to 301.37 VES/USD by year-end 2025, a 479% depreciation, while the black-market/crypto-referenced rate reached roughly 560 VES/USD in the same period. The economy remains structured around petroleum, historically approximately 95% of export earnings and the majority of fiscal revenue via the state oil company PDVSA, alongside a contracting formal manufacturing base, informal retail and services, small-scale agriculture, and illegal/informal gold mining.

Venezuela’s 2025 total exports were valued at roughly $8.3 billion and imports at roughly $13.2 billion, leaving a trade deficit financed increasingly by informal dollar flows and, historically, oil-for-debt arrangements with China. The United States and China remain the principal trade partners on the export side, though estimates of exact market share vary by source, reflecting the volatility introduced by the shifting sanctions regime. China remains the largest single import-origin country. US sanctions policy underwent major shifts in the research window: Chevron’s Venezuela license was revoked by the Trump administration on February 26, 2025, partially restored in a stripped-down maintenance-only form around May-July 2025, and then substantially widened after a change in national leadership on January 3, 2026 — OFAC’s General License 50A (February 18, 2026) authorized Chevron, BP, Eni, Shell, Repsol, and Maurel & Prom to resume oil/gas lifting, export, refining, and new investment in Venezuela, including new exploration and joint ventures. In a further break from 25 years of prior economic policy, Acting President Delcy Rodríguez signed legislation opening Venezuela’s oil sector to private/foreign ownership in early 2026. FDI inflows were modest and volatile prior to this shift: $1.63 billion in 2024, up from near-zero ($0.01 billion) in 2023, reflecting years of expropriation risk, sanctions, and currency controls that suppressed foreign investment; whether the 2026 sanctions and ownership reforms produce a materially higher FDI figure will not be visible in official data until 2026/2027 releases.

Unemployment was reported at 5.3% in both 2024 and 2025, a figure that should be read cautiously given Venezuela’s very large informal sector and constrained official statistical capacity. The minimum wage was frozen at 13,000,000 VES/month through 2025 and into 2026, rendered nearly meaningless by hyperinflation, with public-sector wages such as teacher salaries reported at $6-$15/month. ENCOVI, the main independent household survey conducted by a consortium of Venezuelan universities, found multidimensional poverty at 56.5% in 2024, down 2.4 percentage points from 2023, with extreme-poverty households falling 17.1% year-on-year to 3.4 million households — a genuine improvement from the 2018-2021 nadir but still affecting a majority of the population. Venezuela’s emigration crisis remains the largest in the Western Hemisphere: cumulative departures since 2015 are estimated at roughly 7.9 million people, with Colombia hosting the largest share (approximately 2.8 million). A 2025 shift saw return movements begin to exceed new departures for the first time in years, though only 11.4% of Venezuelans abroad said they wanted to return in the near term as of the relevant 2025 survey. On the political front: a disputed presidential election was held July 28, 2024, producing a 16-month standoff over the result, during which the United States escalated military pressure through 2025, including maritime strikes described by the US as counter-narcotics operations beginning September 2025. On January 3, 2026, a US military operation resulted in the capture of President Nicolás Maduro, who was flown to New York to face narco-terrorism charges; Vice President Delcy Rodríguez subsequently assumed the acting presidency with US backing, and internationally-mediated political talks between government and opposition figures began August 6, 2026. A magnitude-7.2/7.5 earthquake doublet on June 24, 2026 caused an estimated 6,500-plus deaths (as of August 2026) and severe infrastructure destruction in La Guaira state, adding a major reconstruction dimension to 2026-2027 economic activity.