U.S. Investment in Venezuela Down in '06

U.S. investment in Venezuela likely plummeted last year because of mistrust in changes being imposed on the economy by President Hugo Chavez's leftist government, the head of a local business chamber said in remarks published Thursday.

Edmond Saade, president of the Venezuelan American Chamber of Commerce and Industry, was quoted by the El Universal newspaper as saying that annual U.S. investment in Venezuela has ranged between US$600 million (euro462 million at current exchange rates) to US$1 billion (euro777 million) in recent years.

But at the end of September, U.S. investment had only reached US$25.3 million (euro19.4 million) and was expected to have ended 2006 at around US$30 million (euro23 million), "about 4 or 5 percent of the normal volume," Saade told the paper.

Saade attributed the drop to investors' "mistrust" about the state of Venezuela's economy caused in part by a lack of "clear, defined rules of the game."

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