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Business Daily

What next for Venezuela?

Business Daily

BBC

Business

4.4816 Ratings

🗓️ 12 February 2026

⏱️ 19 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Six weeks after the capture of President Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela appears to be shifting its economic strategy.

The government is reopening its crucial oil industry to foreign investment and redirecting oil exports back toward the United States.

Presenter Rahul Tandon is joined by producer Gideon Long, who spent five years reporting from Venezuela, to examine the changes introduced since Maduro’s capture and explore what further steps may be required to persuade international companies to return and invest. They also consider whether Venezuela can reduce its reliance on oil and develop a more diversified, resilient economy.

We hear voices from inside and outside the country, including acting president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, as well as US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

If you'd like to get in touch with the team, our email address is businessdaily@bbc.co.uk

Presenters: Rahul Tandon and Gideon Long Produced by Gideon Long and Elisabeth Mahy

Business Daily is the home of in-depth audio journalism devoted to the world of money and work. From small startup stories to big corporate takeovers, global economic shifts to trends in technology, we look at the key figures, ideas and events shaping business.

Each episode is a 17-minute deep dive into a single topic, featuring expert analysis and the people at the heart of the story.

Recent episodes explore the weight-loss drug revolution, the growth in AI, the cost of living, why bond markets are so powerful, China's property bubble, and Gen Z's experience of the current job market.

We also feature in-depth interviews with company founders and some of the world's most prominent CEOs. These include Google's Sundar Pichai, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, and the CEO of Starbucks, Brian Niccol.

(Picture: A man on a motorcycle transports water bottles past pumpjacks, beside deteriorating oil infrastructure on the shores of Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela. Credit: Reuters)

Transcript

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0:00.0

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.

0:06.8

Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC World Service with me, Rahul Tandon.

0:13.1

He's Venezuela's oil industry starting to flow again.

0:17.1

Today, we're returning to the country to find out what's changed since the removal of Nicholas Maduro.

0:22.7

Venezuela has also agreed that the United States will immediately begin refining and selling up to 50 million barrels of Venezuela in crude oil.

0:31.2

So sales might be going up, but should all the focus be on oil?

0:36.0

We are never going to be as rich as we were in the past

0:39.4

if we are just going to rely on oil.

0:41.3

That's today's Business Daily from the BBC World Service.

0:50.8

The United States says it struck targets in Venezuela and captured the country's president and his wife.

0:57.8

Now I'm sure many of you remember those sounds from the 3rd of January. A dramatic moment for

1:03.8

Venezuela. Here in our studio, I've got Gideon Long who knows Venezuela very well. You remember that day, don't you?

1:11.8

It was an astonishing day, Rahul, especially for me having been to Venezuela so many times

1:16.6

during the time that I was working as the Financial Times correspondent. So during that time,

1:20.7

I went to Venezuela, probably about 12 times, I'd say, during those five years. I mean, for me,

1:25.3

it was a real education in what a full-scale economic

1:29.2

collapse looks like. The hyperinflation was just off the scale. I mean, it's been compared to

1:35.6

the most notorious bouts of hyperinflation in history, the Weimar Republic and Germany in the

1:41.0

1920s, or Hungary and Greece in the Second World War or Nicaragua

1:44.4

in the 1980s.

1:45.8

Massive hyperinflation.

1:47.0

And just in those five years, the government lopped 11 zeros off the banknotes.

...

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