More expect Venezuela will collapse and have regime change within 12 months

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The consensus view among the participants of the Emerging Markets Trade Association and Siobhan Morden, a managing director for Nomura Securities in New York, is that Venezuela’s leader Madura will be out within 12 months.

Nextbigfuture published on March 4, 2018 that I expect a military coup in Venezuela before the end of 2018.

There was Penn State University research which indicates why there is a high probability of a military coup based upon the economic and public health condition of the country.

Direct military intervention aka a military coup is needed for the Madura regime to change.

Madura is currently trying to purge military members who are not Chavistas or PSUV loyalists.

The catalyst to motivate military intervention in removing Maduro would be the collapse in PdVSA oil production that compromises the financing of the rank and file and PdVSA employees. These are the militant Chavistas in red shirts and berets.

To better assess a regime change date, PdVSA bondholders will need to watch the cashflow stress at the central bank (negative $11 billion now) and other leading indicators of economic collapse.

Oil Production is about half the level of peak oil production around 1998-2002. Venezuela oil production was as high as 3.1 million barrels per day averaged over a year and in 2017 was about 1.6 million barrels per day. It is forecasted that Venezuela oil production could fall to 1.0 to 1.35 million barrels per day be the end of 2018.

A survey of 2,400 companies out of 3,200 in the private sector of Venezuela show them to be operating at just 24% capacity. Some 44% of them are expecting to go out of business before December 2018.