The economic impact on the Venezuelan public business sector since the sanctions were imposed by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)

Abstract

Regarding the sanctions imposed on Venezuela, there is a tendency to blame them for the country's crisis, which is an issue that must be treated with extreme caution. Venezuela had never experienced a macroeconomic collapse of such a magnitude. In this unfortunate scenario, a significant number of economic sanctions of all kinds have emerged, which have affected business people in the public sector (government officials, high-level officials, military officers, public institutions, the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV), Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), CITGO, state-owned companies, etc.). The general objective of the research is to analyze the economic impact of the sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on the Venezuelan public business sector. The research is framed within a field design, with a descriptive level (Hernández et al. 2010), with a finite population composed of five (5) experts in the field, for which a questionnaire consisting of multiple choice questions was applied. Primary documentary sources based on Monroy, Contreras & Desatnik (2003), Mommer (2003), data from the main page of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), digital newspapers, as well as other investigations by experts in the field were also consulted. The study concludes that, in practice, if the sanctions continue, this will imply that the costs of operating in Venezuela will skyrocket significantly for international companies, increasing the legal costs of companies, which will now have a much greater job to make sure that that they will not be put at risk for breaking the law.