Venezuela pitches an oil and mining-led plan to the IMF

Venezuela told the IMF that oil and mining will drive its economic recovery. Calixto Ortega, the country’s vice president for the economy and its representative to the Fund, presented the roadmap on Wednesday, October 14, 2026 in Bangkok, Thailand, at the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. He also said Venezuela signed agreements with gold producers this year and aims to store that gold at the central bank to build international reserves, according to Reuters.

What is known

• The plan: Ortega called oil and minerals the main engines for generating foreign income, which in turn finance the rest of the economy, according to the Spanish news agency EFE. State broadcaster Radio Nacional de Venezuela describes it as a roadmap based on the extractive hydrocarbons and mining industries.
• Where the money would go: according to EFE and RNV, higher fiscal revenue from the extractive sector would go to neglected areas such as water and electricity.
• Gold: Reuters reports that Venezuela signed agreements with gold producers in 2026 and wants to store the gold at the Central Bank of Venezuela to build reserves. It did not name the producers.
• The IMF’s numbers: the IMF database, checked today, shows Venezuelan GDP growth of 9% in 2025, 5% in 2026 and 7% in 2027, and average inflation of 467.9% in 2026 and 174.7% in 2027. EFE attributes the 2026 and 2027 figures to the World Economic Outlook released Tuesday, October 13.
• Debt: Ortega said the debt sustainability analysis will come out “very soon,” without giving a date. Reuters puts the restructuring at an estimated $150 billion to $200 billion. He said the documents were “almost ready” in June, before that month’s earthquakes.
• Currency: he said dollarization is “not the right answer,” and that Venezuela should strengthen its own currency, the bolívar, and move to inflation targeting in the medium term, aiming for two-digit inflation “sooner rather than later.”

What is not known

• What the plan’s pillars are. EFE says the roadmap has four; none of the sources lists them.
• Who signed the gold deals, how much gold and on what timeline. Neither Reuters nor the Venezuelan outlets that cite it give names, volumes or dates.
• How much mining contributes to the economy today. There is no recent official figure for mining’s share of GDP or exports. The latest official gold output figure is 9.5 metric tons in 2025; Mining Minister Héctor Silva projected about 12 tons by the end of 2026, Finanzas Digital reported in May, citing Últimas Noticias.
• What the IMF thinks of the plan. None of the sources reports an IMF assessment of the roadmap.

Why it matters

Venezuela restored its relationship with the IMF in April, after leaving the Fund in 2019, and is now presenting a plan in which mining sits next to oil as a source of hard currency. It follows April’s Organic Mining Law, the U.S. Treasury licenses that allow trade in Venezuelan minerals, and the first shipment of Venalum aluminum to the U.S. in eight years, which we covered in Venezuelan aluminum returns to the US.

According to Ortega, the gold from the new agreements would go into central bank reserves, tying it to his goal of a stronger bolívar. How much gold actually arrives depends on whether output in the Orinoco Mining Arc grows as the government projects.

To see which minerals Venezuela has, where they are and how much it produces, read our guide Venezuela Minerals: List, Locations and the Most Valuable, and for gold in detail, Venezuelan gold.