Reuters, 06.04.03, 6:59 PM ET By Silene Ramirez

CARACAS, Venezuela, June 4 (Reuters) - Venezuela's Finance Minister Tobias Nobrega is touring Europe this week in a bid to convince official lenders, private banks, and rating agencies that the country's economic outlook is brighter than it seems. "Venezuela is beginning to be seen as a country that, with all its difficulties, has positive prospects in the medium and long term," Nobrega told Reuters in an interview Wednesday by mobile phone from Paris.

After spending two days in France, he was due to fly to the Netherlands Wednesday as part of a tour that includes a stop in London at the end of the week.

"The main purpose was to talk with European (export credit agencies), but we've used the opportunity to hold other meetings and make presentations about the country's financial situation," the minister said.

Venezuela, the world's No. 5 oil exporter, is in a severe recession following a crippling strike by foes of leftist President Hugo Chavez in December and January that disrupted oil exports and slashed government revenues.

The strike, which ended in early February, forced the government to impose strict price and currency controls, which have worsened the recession. The economy shrank by a record 29 percent in the first quarter of 2003.

But Nobrega will be stressing to bankers, investors and government officials that Chavez's government has managed to restore oil production to pre-strike levels of just over 3 million barrels per day. He also points to a recovery in Venezuelan sovereign debt bond values in recent weeks and an improvement in the country risk profile.

Venezuela's share of the benchmark J.P. Morgan Emerging Market Bond Index Plus <11EMJ> rose 1.26 percent Wednesday.

SYMPATHETIC AUDIENCE? But his audience may take some convincing. In a gloomy outlook shared by many private analysts, the International Monetary Fund has predicted the Venezuelan economy will shrink by 17 percent this year.

Chavez and his ministers reject this forecast as too pessimistic. One of the Venezuelan Central Bank directors, Armando Leon, told reporters Wednesday, he believed the economy would contract around 10 percent in 2003.

A finance ministry source mistakenly told Reuters Tuesday that Nobrega was in New York seeking financial help from bankers and investors. Nobrega told Reuters from Paris that a New York trip had been considered but was postponed, and he flew to Europe instead.

Nobrega was seeking to ensure that European export credit agencies did not take the same step as the U.S. Ex-Im Bank, which in April suspended export guarantees for Venezuela, citing the absence of "reasonable" guarantees of payment. The minister said he hoped that the European export guarantee agencies would be "more balanced ... than those on the other side of the Atlantic".

Asked whether he would be discussing new Venezuelan debt issues or seeking fresh financing, Nobrega was non-committal: "This is continual, these are things that you follow and monitor day by day".

In comments in Caracas Wednesday, the Central Bank's Leon said he believed Venezuela could place bonds abroad worth between $1 billion and $1.5 billion before the end of the year.

Nobrega has said in the past that the government wants to ease a heavy concentration of debt payments this year through possible debt swaps, direct credits from banks and financing for specific projects, especially in the strategic oil sector.

Venezuela is due to make debt payments totaling $960 million this month, according to official figures. The country's total external debt stands at $22.3 billion, of which $5 billion in debt payments and service falls due this year. (Additional reporting by Ana Isabel Martinez

Source: NZOOM-Reuters World oil prices slipped on Wednesday when Indonesia said Opec did not need to curtail supplies at a meeting next week despite the expected resumption in exports from Iraq.

Indonesian Mines and Energy Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro said the cartel did not need to consider cuts while prices were inside Opec's $US22-$US28 per barrel band. International benchmark Brent crude oil fell 15 cents to $US27.13 per barrel, while US crude futures shed nine cents to $US30.58.

"Now that a consensus appears to be emerging within Opec that a production cut at its meeting next week is not necessary, we expect crude oil prices to continue weakening over the next few days," said analysts at Barclays Capital Research.

Some Opec ministers had hinted that a cut might be on the cards at next week's meeting in Qatar, but prices have risen strongly towards the upper end of Opec's target range.

Opec's reference export price stood at $US27.09 on Tuesday.

"Our interest is the price stays above $US22 per barrel. If prices stay above that, then there is no need for Opec to cut quotas," Yusgiantoro said.

Selling intensified when US government data showed inventories in the world's largest consumer rose unexpectedly strongly last week.

Commercial stocks of crude oil and refined products rose nine million barrels last week, about 1%.

Tanks are still below their normal levels for this time of the year, due to a series of supply interruptions from Venezuela, Nigeria and Iraq.

War-torn Iraq has suspended exports since the US-led war began in March and the authorities expect the first tankers to lift crude from storage tanks in the middle of June.

Previous targets for resuming exports have been put back because of unexpected problems with looting and sabotage in the lawless country.

The head of Iraq's southern oil company, which produced most of Iraq's crude before the war, said on Wednesday output there was just a fraction of pre-war levels because of the security problems.

Total Iraqi output now stands at 750,000 barrels per day, about a quarter of pre-war levels, and Iraqi authorities in Baghdad expect it to double by the middle of the month.

Paul Stevens, professor of petroleum policy at Britain's University of Dundee said the looting and sabotage indicated that current forecasts for Iraqi exports were far too high.

"People are grossly underestimating the time it will take to restore pre-war capacity in Iraq," he said.

"The U.S. and Britain don't have the troops on the ground or the administration to do it."

June 4 (<a href=quote.bloomberg.com>Bloomberg) -- Mexico's peso had its biggest decline in four years after a deputy governor of the central bank suggested the bank may be ready to reduce interest rates as growth slows and inflation remains under control.

The peso fell 2.7 percent to 10.5725 per dollar in New York trading at 4:15 p.m. The peso last had a bigger one-day decline on Jan. 13, 1999, when it fell 3.9 percent. Brazil's real rose on the central bank's offer to sell interest rate swaps.

Jesus Marcos Yacaman, one of Mexico's four deputy central bank governors, last night told Bloomberg in an interview in Buenos Aires the Mexican economy may grow less than the bank's forecast. Similar suggestions by bank officials have many investors expecting the bank to reduce interest rates by raising overnight lending to banks, said Guillermo Estebanez, a currency strategist at Banc of America Securities Inc. in San Francisco.

They're basically saying that they'll tolerate lower rates,'' Estebanez said. All the factors that were supporting the peso, like the sales of reserve dollars, have worn out.''

Mexico's Central Bank Governor, Guillermo Ortiz, in April cut the forecast for economic growth this year to 2.4 percent from 3 percent, after raising interest rates five times since September. Economists expect the central bank to meet its target for inflation of 2 percent to 4 percent.

Slow growth in the U.S., which buys 85 percent of Mexico's exports and accounts for 70 percent of the investments flowing into Mexico, has spurred concern Latin America's largest economy may stall.

Yields

Lower inflation expectations have driven down yields on the country's benchmark 28-day Treasury note to a record low of 4.72 percent at yesterday's central bank auction, below the trailing 12- month inflation rate, which makes Mexican assets less attractive to overseas investors.

``Foreign banks have been the most active today buying dollars,'' said Omar Martin del Campo, a currency trader at Arka Casa de Bolsa SA in Mexico City. Martin del Campo said Citigroup Inc. and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. have both been selling pesos.

Estebanez said he expected peso traders to focus on U.S. economic indicators including payroll data, which is scheduled to be reported the day after tomorrow, and next week's retail sales figures. Indications that the data suggest slower growth in the world's largest economy could accelerate the peso's decline, he said.

Adding to the peso's decline, Mexico last month reported its trade deficit widened in April from a year ago on declining exports, which account for a quarter of its $600 billion economy.

Exports fell 5.7 percent from the same year-ago period, increasing some investors' concerns that rising production costs and a stronger currency may hold Mexico's share of the U.S. export market at about 10 percent.

The peso future contract for June delivery, the most-traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, fell for a second day, losing 2.9 percent to 9.4300 cents per peso from 9.7125 yesterday.

Brazil

Brazil's real gained for a second day after the government said it would sell investors more insurance against exchange-rate losses, reducing the chance companies will buy dollars to guard against a weaker real.

The real climbed 1 percent to 2.9160 per dollar, a three-week high, in Sao Paulo, boosting its gains in 2003 to 21 percent, the best performer of the world's 16 most-widely traded currencies. Earlier, it rose to a three-week high of 2.8920.

The central bank sold $260.25 million nominal value of interest-rate swaps of $330 million it offered at an auction today. The government two days ago refinanced 77.8 percent of the $1.4 billion of swaps due June 12.

Clearly the move is going to help the real, some may even interpret it as creating an anchor for the currency,'' said Flavio Farah head of the Treasury desk at the Sao Paulo unit of Dusseldorf, Germany-based Westdeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale. Still, I don't know why they're doing it, with all the money coming in there was no need.''

2002

Brazilian banks and companies have sold almost $6 billion of bonds abroad on increased investor expectations that South America's largest economy can pay its roughly $400 billion debt, helping the real strengthen. At the same time, a stronger real makes it more expensive for companies and investors to buy swaps, reducing the demand for the contracts, said Daniel Vairo, a trader at Opportunity Asset Management Ltda., which manages about 7 billion reais of stocks and bonds in Rio de Janeiro.

The swaps, along with dollar-indexed bonds, were sold in the past several years to protect the real from declines as investors pulled money from the country on concern Argentina would default or Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, elected Brazil's president last year, would adopt policies that might bankrupt the country.

Bank Tally

All told, the central bank promised investors it would pay any currency exchange losses on $58 billion of investments. While the real's rally this year has turned central bank losses on the contracts into profits, the government says it wants to reduce the amount of the swaps held by investors.

``It seems to me it would be better to have the $300 million it could sell today available for later,'' Farah said.

Any such event might cause the dollar to surge against Brazil's real and require swap sales to limit declines, he added.

Brazil's benchmark 8 percent bond maturing in 2014 gained for the fourth day in six, adding 0.81 cent to 90.44 cents on the dollar, paring the yield to 10.35 percent, according to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.

Regional Currencies

Argentina's peso rose for a fourth day, gaining 0.5 percent to 2.8225 per dollar, raising the currency's gains in 2003 against the dollar to 19 percent, the second-best performance among 59 currencies tracked by Bloomberg.

Colombia's peso rose for the third day in four, adding 0.3 percent to 2841.50 per dollar, while Chile's peso fell for a second day, declining 0.3 percent to 715.25 per dollar.

Peru's new sol rose for a second day in three, adding 0.3 percent to 3.4820 to the dollar. Venezuela's bolivar was fixed at 1598 per dollar this year.

Posted on Wed, Jun. 04, 2003 The Miami Herald, BY HARRIET JOHNSON BRACKEY hbrackey@herald.com

Turning today's fear into tomorrow's cash flow, Chubb Group will soon start selling homeowner policies in Florida that cover child abductions, home invasions and stalking threats.

For a price of $85 a year, the coverage can provide, in the case of a missing child, as much as $300,000 to hire a forensic expert to gather evidence, a public relations expert to mount a publicity campaign and a security consultant to help with the search. The policy will replace lost wages for parents, pay for family psychiatric counseling and the insurance firm will post a $50,000 reward.

''Customers were concerned about these kinds of crimes -- in particular child abduction and home invasions,'' says Peter Spicer, Chubb's new products manager. He cites national statistics that show 1.4 million stalking cases a year, 1.3 million home invasions and 58,000 child abductions that are not family-related.

The policies come with strings, however.

For child abductions, the coverage applies only to children under the age of 13 who are taken by non-family members.

''That is an extremely small segment of what we deal with,'' says Nancy McBride, executive director of the Florida branch of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. She estimates there are only 100 such abductions a year nationwide that are not resolved or in which the children are killed. That compares to 200,0000 estimated abductions by family members annually.

''This a parent's worst fear and I will say there are a lot of products out there that market to this fear. This is certainly one of them,'' she said.

The policies turn terrible events into mundane terms of coverage and exclusions. For example, stalking coverage applies only if you have a restraining order in effect. The coverage is also portable. That is, if someone busts into your hotel room in New York City, that could be considered a home invasion for a Florida policyholder, but the policy exempts travel to places on the State Department's watch list, such as Colombia or Venezuela.

A spokesman for State Farm insurance said the company had no plans to offer the unusual riders to homeowners. State Farm insures about 20 percent of Florida homeowners, or 975,000 policies, compared to Chubb's 20,000.

However, kidnapping coverage has long been available, but not as part of homeowners insurance. It's been sold mostly to corporations for their key executives or employees working in foreign countries.

Wealthy families, too, tended to buy the so-called kidnapping and ransom coverage. Since 1996, AIG has sold child abduction policies as an add-on to that coverage or as part of a high-net worth family's personal insurance. The child abduction policies from AIG would cover $5 million in costs to search for a child. The annual premium is $1,000 to $5,000.

Chubb's product is far less pricey and includes more than child abductions. Its home invasion coverage, unlike typical burglary insurance, would pay medical expenses as well as replace lost salary during a period of rest and recuperation.

Typical burglary coverage ''does not provide psychological counseling to families to get them emotionally centered again and comfortable in their own home,'' Spicer said. ``The coverage is aimed at people and not just their property.''

Stalking coverage has unusual provisions, too. The homeowner can get up to $3,000 to cover the cost of installing a security system and up to $5,000 to cover the cost of temporarily relocating while the stalker threatens.

Chubb began rolling out the new riders state by state in 2000. One of its initial states was Colorado, which suffered by the infamous murder of JonBennet Ramsey.

All told, 6,000 such riders have been sold in six states plus the United Kingdom, Chubb's Spicer says. Whether any claims have been filed is proprietary information that the company will not disclose.

Chubb began selling the homeowners' riders in Pennsylvania last Monday, where the cost is $110 a year.

On June 26, the coverage will become available in Florida.

Who needs these latest insurance coverages?

The answer's not clear.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement reports that overall violent crime dropped 1.9 percent last year, but two of the covered categories have experienced recent sharp increases.

Stalking cases in Florida jumped 16 percent to 797 in 2002 from 684 the previous year.

Robberies at residences -- which would include home invasions -- are on the rise. FDLE reports there were 5,051 of these crimes reported last year, compared to 4,714 in 2001.

Statistics on child abductions are difficult to ascertain, although crime experts seem to agree that abductions by family members are far more common than those by strangers, which are covered under the new homeowners' riders.

The 58,000 annual nationwide total that Chubb cites is a figure from the Department of Justice. McBride says that in most of those cases, there is a sexual motivation and the child is usually relased soon thereafter, ``if not unharmed, then certainly alive.''

As for other services provided under the Chubb policy, McBride notes that in the last 20 years, a great deal of resources have been made available to parents of missing children. For example, her organization will organize a massive distribution of flyers. It also supports Team Adam, which consists mostly of retired law enforcement officials who mount a SWAT team effort when a child disappears. Both services are provided free of charge.

What's more, media coverage, McBride says, is guaranteed in most cases. And nationwide Amber Alerts, reporting a missing child quickly after the disappearance, are now part of the law.

''I just don't want parents to do something based on fear,'' she says. Of course, she notes, no product can prevent child abductions or murders.

Chubb's Spicer said the company hopes to make the policy riders available in four or five more states by the end of this year, and next year, in much of the nation.

Contact Chubb for more information at www.chubb.com or 908 903-2000.

Estimados/as amigos/as: Queremos compartir con ustedes el próximo artículo de Gerver Torres que será publicado en El Universal este sábado 14 de junio.

¿Quiere colaborar con nosotros? Reenvíe este artículo a sus familiares y amigos, e invítelos a formar parte de Un sueño para Venezuela

Gerver Torres En un seminario internacional en el cual se discutían experiencias de países latinoamericanos en materia de desarrollo, un delegado asiático me dijo que Chile no correspondía a la América Latina; que sus éxitos económicos y sociales lo hacían más bien parte del sureste asiático.

Ciertamente, Chile viene siguiendo desde hace ya bastantes años una ruta que se diferencia notablemente de la que han seguido otros países de la región y que se traduce para los chilenos en los mejores indicadores de progreso de la América Latina. El país austral ha crecido a una tasa promedio anual de 5% durante los últimos doce años, lo cual ha permitido incrementar los salarios en 30% y reducir la pobreza al 20% de la población. Chile es reconocido hoy como el país más competitivo de la región, el de mayor transparencia en la gestión pública y uno de los que cuenta con el indicador de desarrollo humano más alto de las naciones emergentes.

Ahora Chile acaba de dar otro paso que lo reafirma en la vanguardia de nuestros países: ha firmado el primer acuerdo de integración comercial que se establece en Sur América con el gigante del norte. De esta manera, el país más distante de los Estados Unidos, geográficamente hablando, se convierte en su socio comercial más cercano dentro del sub-continente. Se calcula que el acuerdo firmado puede hacer aumentar hasta en dos puntos el crecimiento anual de la economía chilena. Eso quiere decir que en cuatro décadas Chile puede ser el doble de rico de lo que es hoy, sólo como consecuencia de esta integración. El acuerdo se añade además, al que firmaron con la Comunidad Económica Europea a principios de año y que ya muestra sus primeros frutos.

Como resultado de los acuerdos firmados, más productos chilenos saldrán al exterior: vinos, frutas, mermeladas, productos del mar, de la industria forestal entre otros, llegarán a mercados más grandes. Las exportaciones chilenas que han crecido a un 7% durante los últimos doce años, recibirán un estimulo adicional. Por su parte, el consumidor chileno tendrá acceso a los mejores productos del mundo, a los mejores precios.

Venezuela tiene más razones que Chile para buscar un acuerdo de integración con toda la América, incluido los Estados Unidos. La complementariedad de nuestras economías es mayor, y la distancia física es menor que la de Chile con el vecino del norte. Por ello, es Venezuela quien debería estar liderando la integración del gran mercado americano. Lamentablemente no es así.

Está bien que el delegado asiático ubique a Chile en otro continente. Nosotros en cambio, deberíamos recordar que esa experiencia tan exitosa está muy cerca, en la América Latina y aprender lo máximo de ella.

gerver@liderazgoyvision.org

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