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- The sale of Monómeros to the Colombian state followed high-level talks during the CELAC energy summit and was made possible by improved bilateral ties.
MEXICO, CITY, Mexico – (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro confirmed that his government is in the process of finalising an agreement with Colombia for the sale of state-owned fertiliser company Monómeros, ending speculation over its potential privatization.
Maduro told teleSUR during a televised interview on Thursday that the two countries are moving forward with the transaction following an effort to restore the productive capacity of the firm after mismanagement under opposition control.
“The company Monómeros was seized during the government of Iván Duque and was completely looted by Leopoldo López, Ramos Allup, and by Colombian mafias linked to Iván Duque,” said Maduro. “When [Colombian] president Gustavo Petro arrived, the company returned to the hands of its legitimate owners, which is the Venezuelan company Pequiven, and we recovered it in record time.”
While managed by opposition-appointed boards between 2019 and 2022, Monómeros was plagued by scandals and corruption allegations, which severely impacted its productivity and generated serious issues for Colombia’s rural producers. The enterprise likewise ran into fiscal troubles with mounting debt.
After its return to Pequiven’s control, the company was then faced with the prospect of navigating Washington’s renewed “maximum pressure” campaign against Caracas, with a looming suspension of a sanctions waiver from the US Treasury Department.
The Venezuelan government explored various possibilities, including a sale to the Colombian state, a partial sell-off of shares, or even its complete privatisation. One rumoured buyer was Nitrofert, a firm led by Venezuelan national Jorge Pacheco, who has alleged close ties to the Colombian far right and the Venezuelan opposition, specifically to hardline figures such as Leopoldo López and his protege Juan Guaidó, the one-time self-proclaimed “interim president” of Venezuela.
Given the firm’s critical role in supplying agrochemicals to Colombia’s rural producers, Petro had previously intervened to express his firm opposition to the potential privatization of Monómeros and the potential establishment of monopolies for agricultural inputs. The Pequiven subsidiary currently supplies around 40 percent of fertilizers for Colombian coffee and sugar cane producers.
The impending sale of Monómeros to the Colombian state follows high-level negotiations at the 7th meeting of energy ministers of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), where Pequiven president Román Maniglia signed a confidentiality agreement with Edwin Palma, Colombian minister of energy and mines.
The deal reportedly established a base price for Monómeros to start negotiations. Palma said that Colombian state control of the firm would help stabilize prices and reduce the country’s dependence on agricultural imports. Petro government officials have not disclosed if Bogotá plans to buy the entirety of shares or just a majority stake, as was first proposed in March 2023.
Colombia further announced that it would seek a waiver from the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), as Monómeros remains under sanctions. The company is presently under supervision by Colombia’s Corporation Superintendency in order to preserve its assets amid rumours of a sale. Colombian law allows the Corporation Superintendency to employ a series of escalating levels of intervention when an enterprise is in a critical “judicial, accounting, economic or administrative” situation.
Colombia’s corporate watchdog previously assumed control of the company in January 2022, when Monómeros was under the management of the Venezuelan opposition and a series of scandals put the company at immediate risk of insolvency.
Founded as a joint venture between Venezuela and Colombia, Monómeros became fully owned by Venezuela’s state-owned petrochemical company Pequiven in 2006, when the Hugo Chávez government bought out shares from Ecopetrol and Dutch firm Koninklijke DSM to become the sole proprietor of the firm.
