The Courier-Mail From correspondents in Panama City 21may03

A DONATION from a businessman has rescued Venezuela's entry in this year's Miss Universe contest. Media magnate Gustavo Cisneros, head of the Cisneros Group, has offered to pay the costs of Mariangel Ruiz after Venezuela's organising committee announced it could not afford to send her to the event in Panama.

Since 1979, Venezuelan women have won four Miss Universe titles, five Miss Worlds and three Miss Internationals.

Cisneros said: "The historic brotherhood between Panama and Venezuela obliges us to make our best effort so that this beautiful girl can come here to demonstrate once again the beauty and intelligence of the Venezuelan woman."

The chief of the Miss Venezuela Organisation, Osmel Sousa, said last week that tight foreign exchange controls had made it difficult to obtain the $US80,000 ($122,520) needed to send Ruiz to the event.

The Cisneros Group owns Venevision television, which had announced that Miss Venezuela would not go to the Panama pageant for "political and economic reasons". The government had no comment.

Cisneros said: "(Despite) the real difficulties that Venezuela is experiencing, our decision (to send Miss Venezuela) is the fruit of our commitment to the public."

Earlier this year, Cisneros accused Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of restricting press freedoms after regulators began proceedings to fine or revoke the licences of two television stations.

Chavez has alleged that Cisneros is trying to destabilise the government.

BBCLast Updated: Tuesday, 20 May, 2003, 12:04 GMT 13:04 UK

Mariangel Ruiz: Hoping to join Venezuela's winning tradition

The president of a television channel has stepped in to ensure Miss Venezuela will not miss out on the Miss Universe beauty contest.

The organisers of the Miss Venezuela pageant had announced that their reigning beauty, Mariangel Ruiz, would not be taking part in the Miss Universe contest being held in Panama this year.

They said the economic and political crisis in Venezuela meant they could not obtain the $80,000 needed to send a candidate because of foreign currency restrictions imposed by the Chavez government.

But the president of the Cisneros media group, Gustavo Cisneros, whose television channel Venevision transmits the national contest, said he would pay for the Venezuelan winner to take part.

His gesture followed a request from the Panamanian president, Mireya Moscoso, urging him to ensure that there was a Venezuelan representative at the contest on 3 June.

Announcing the decision on the Miss Venezuela website Mr Cisneros said: "I have spoken with the President of Panama who stressed the great importance of Miss Venezuela taking part in Miss Universe."

Centenary celebrations

Speaking from Panama, he added: "Panama is celebrating its centenary, a date that is vital for the whole of Latin America and therefore we have decided that the Cisneros Organisation will take on the duty of bringing Mariangel Ruiz to this beautiful country."

He said it would be a chance to show, once more, the true nature of "the beauty and intelligence of the Venezuelan woman".

Venezuela, which has won more international beauty contests in the last 25 years than any other country, would have missed the pageant for the first time in over 40 years.

Venezuelan contestants have won four Miss Universe title and five Miss World contests.

Miss Ruiz, 23, had said she was "deeply affected" by the possibility that she would not be attending the contest to represent the country's "hopes and expectations".

The financial constraints were imposed by the Chavez government in January to stop panic buying of dollars and so protect the country's dwindling international reserves.

<a href=www.zeenews.com>zeenews.com

Panama City, May 20: Doubts over whether Venezuela, famed for its beauty show winners, could afford to enter this year's Miss Universe contest were resolved when the organisers announced that Miss Venezuela would take part after all.

The main sponsor of Miss Venezuela, private television channel Venevision, said last week it could not obtain the hard currency needed to send beauty queen Mariangel Ruiz to the contest in Panama, blaming tight foreign exchange controls imposed by the Caracas government to stem capital flight.

But the president of the Miss Universe organisation, Paula Shugart, said in a statement yesterday that brown-haired Ruiz would compete in the contest next month.

She did not explain how the issue had been resolved, but in a separate news release Venevision expressed thanks to Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso. It was not clear what part the President played in making it possible for Miss Venezuela to enter.

Venezuelan women have won four miss universe crowns, five Miss World crowns and three Miss International crowns.

The Miss Universe pageant began in 1951 and has a television audience of 600 million in 176 countries, according to the organizers.

Reuters, 05.19.03, 6:38 PM ET

CARACAS, Venezuela, May 19 (Reuters) - Business owners trying to decipher Venezuela's complex currency controls to access U.S. dollars are being approached by shady middlemen offering to cut through the red tape -- but at a price.

Accusations of corruption are surfacing nearly four months after the Venezuelan government introduced strict foreign exchange curbs, which critics say have starved the world's No. 5 oil exporter of hard currency even as it battles to shore up its battered economy.

In interviews with Reuters, two private local firms who applied to the state currency board Cadivi said they were contacted by "fixers" offering to secure them access to greenbacks in exchange for a 12 percent commission.

One executive at an oil machinery importer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said in March Cadivi refused his firm's application to register for the dollars it needed to import equipment for the oil sector.

But a few weeks later the firm received two unsolicited phone calls offering to help them register with Cadivi and also obtain U.S. currency for a commission and a $600 fee.

"One said 'We know that your application was rejected. I have someone who can help with your registration,'" the oil executive said. "How did they know that? They had to have some inside contact."

Foreign diplomats in Caracas, who monitor domestic trade developments, say they have also been informed of similar cases by other businessmen.

It was not clear who the callers were or how they were able to access information about which companies had applied to Cadivi and which had been refused.

The executive at the oil firm said his company received the calls after Cadivi refused its registration, alleging they had failed to adequately prove the nature of their business.

He rejected the unsolicited offer although his company, like many others, has been crippled by the hard currency drought. The firm normally carries out multiple imports to ship in petroleum equipment from overseas.

"We want to do things the right way. This isn't just one import and that's it. Our company relies on access to dollars through legal means, whatever they are. There has to be a regular flow of currency," he said.

But a Cadivi official contacted by Reuters dismissed suggestions of corruption. The official said the board managed applications through a strict registration system that monitored all transactions.

"This system is under tight control," the official said.

MANY CONTROLS, NOT MANY GREENBACKS

Venezuela decreed the draconian currency and price control regime in February saying it needed to shore up the economy after a two-month opposition strike disrupted vital oil output but failed to oust President Hugo Chavez.

Nearly four months after the curbs were put in place, Cadivi has only approved around $140 million in applications. But very few firms appear to have received hard currency.

Before the new forex rules, Venezuela's currency market traded about $60 million a day alone.

Government officials blame the delays on companies who have failed to properly complete the application process. But private analysts warned months ago that the controls would foster corruption and a black market in dollars.

"The system is so cumbersome and the requirements so byzantine that it has become a blunt instrument that is bludgeoning all of the economy," one foreign diplomat said.

Venezuela's economy shrank nearly 9 percent in 2002 and economists predict that it will contract even more this year with inflation and unemployment climbing higher.

Opponents of Chavez, elected in 1998 on promises to aid the poor, said the currency curbs are already causing shortages in basic foods, such as flour. More than 60 percent of Venezuela's goods are imported.

During the early 1990s, Venezuela implemented an earlier currency control system that spawned a huge black market and rampant corruption. Already, the black market has reappeared with the bolivar trading at around 2,200 bolivars to the U.S. dollar. The official fixed rate is 1,600 to the dollar.

EDUARDO CAMEL ANDERSON EL UNIVERSAL

Venezuelan economist Hugo Faría considers that the new economic plan announced by the Vice Minister of Industry and Commerce (based upon credits at preferential rates, purchases by the government and an "endogenous development") is just a return to "the policy of replacement of imports -a policy that have already failed in the country."

Faría -professor at Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administración, IESA, a top-ranked business school in Venezuela- wonders how many producers and farmers have received soft credits before? He adds that Venezuela had a very successful economy until 1957, when people did not have any of those facilities but low tariffs, when the Central Bank worked as a small currency board and there were just a few state-owned businesses."

From his point of view, "the real solution to poverty is a high and sustained rate of economic growth. To reach that goal, evidence has proven that the appropriate recipe includes economic freedom, an efficient judicial system, low inflation, reduced taxes, and public expenses focused on education, health and national security."

Hugo Faría explains that "the model proposed by Chávez supporters is a copy of "Puntofijismo" (a pact previously adopted by Venezuela's two main political parties to share power). "We do not have an alternative proposal to what we had before."

"We face a repetition of past mistakes: destruction of the legal framework, destruction of the currency through devaluations, increase in current expenditures, a higher interference of the government in the market, approval of laws to block international trade, memberships in obsolete organizations, such as the OPEC, and financing education demand instead of financing its offer," concluded Faría.