Venezuelan Government to Unveil New Airline with View Set on Tourism, Travel Development

A few weeks from now, the Venezuelan government will officially launch Conviasa, a new airline that´s expected to generate as many as 870 full-time positions and 7,900 part-time jobs, said Ricardo Sanguino, chairman of the Venezuelan Congressional Budget Subcommittee.

The company´s capital will be bankrolled with state funds coming from oil exports. With that aim in mind, execs have just opened a mutual account for $16 million in the Bank of Economic and Social Development, and named Petroleos de Venezuela the account bookkeeper and Conviasa the main beneficiary.

The use of these funds was ordered last month by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as he announced the creation of a special development fund fed on by cash from oil exports and tax money with a view to finance a number of development projects, especially in infrastructure.

The creation of the mutual fund has sparked off controversy as private economists point out that Petroleos de Venezuela has poured money into that account that has not been deposited in the Central Bank of Venezuela. Critics are also lashing out at the government about additional funds from spiking oil prices that have been reportedly used in different investment projects and for the company´s own improvement.

Overseas sales of Venezuela´s crude oil –the world´s fifth largest exporter- chip in three quarters of the South American nation´s hard-currency income.

Conviasa will take up the void left by Viasa (Venezolana Internacional de Aviacion) whose flights came to a close on January 1997 on a decision made by Spanish airline Iberia, that had bought out the air carrier from the Venezuelan state as part of a privatization process.

The opening of the new airline comes within the framework of an advertisement plan spurred by the Chavez administration in an effort to double the number of foreign tourists coming to Venezuela –now hovering around three quarters of a million visitors- and to triple the amount of domestic sunbathers, currently in the neighborhood of 13 million trekkers a year.