Peru's foreign minister has stated that embattled Venezuelan opposition leader Manuel Rosales is in Peru but has not requested political asylum.
Rosales is a political opponent of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. He is being prosecuted on corruption charges in Venezuela, and a political ally says Rosales plans to seek asylum abroad.
Jose Antonio Garcia Belaunde earlier told CNN en Espanol that Rosales is in Peru under tourist status.
The Peruvian foreign minister said Tuesday he does not know the date Rosales entered the country, and said he has not requested asylum.
The Latin American Herald Tribune has reported that the Venezuelan government has tightened up hard currency controls amid a flock of signals that Venezuela's oil-dependent economy is running into hard times in the wake of the global financial crisis and its impact on world oil prices and demand.
Industry figures were taken to suggest that Cadivi clamped down on access to hard currency during the first two months of this year. Permits during that period totalled $3.394 billion, down from $5 billion in the same period of 2008.
The motive for this, according to the Latin American Herald Tribune, was that imports began to outstrip exports as oil export income fell sharply during the final three months of last year -- this marks the first time the balance of trade has gone into the red for several years.
The value of imports -- which include large amounts of food, of which Venezuela buys in an estimated 50 to 60 percent of its needs -- surpassed export earnings by $3.724 billion during the fourth quarter of last year, compared with the same period of 2007.
"The lights were at orange, and a clear danger signal was there," said an economist who asked to remain nameless, not least because he's employed in the state sector. "There'd been warnings this was more or less inevitable for some months before, but they were slow off the mark. Maybe they didn't want to know, or they thought it would go away as fast as it arrived. Well, it didn't, it hasn't and it won't."
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