Chavez Bonds Sink on President-for-Life Bid, Oil Drop

Bond investors are telling Hugo Chavez he should be voted out of office instead of winning his campaign to serve as Venezuela’s president another 10 years.

Venezuelan bonds fell the most in Latin America since December, when Chavez began pushing for a referendum to abolish term limits so he can serve through at least 2019. The average yield on the government’s dollar bonds rose to 17.35 percentage points more than Treasuries, from 14.74 points when he took office a decade ago, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.
The combination of Chavez’s political strategy and the 73 percent plunge in oil from a July record is increasing investor concern about the country’s ability to pay its $46 billion of debt. Venezuela, the biggest oil exporter in the Americas, raised government spending to the equivalent of 36 percent of gross domestic product in 2007 from 23 percent in 1998, according to Standard & Poor’s.

“The Chavez model is based on the idea of spending lots of money,” said Michael Atkin, who helps oversee $12 billion in fixed-income assets as head of sovereign research at Putnam Investments in Boston. “The credit quality is deteriorating. It’s hard to want to own Venezuelan debt even at these spreads.”

Bloomberg