LatinNews Daily - 21 February 2025

*Venezuela’s main industrial lobby, Confederación Venezolana de Industriales (Conindustria), has announced that industrial production in the private sector increased by 9.5% year-on-year in the final quarter of 2024. This was due to annual growth of 18.8% in October, 5.6% in November, and 4.4% in December. Conindustria said that the manufacturing sector was operating at 47.8% of capacity in Q4 2024, its highest level since Q2 2015. The biggest obstacles to increased production, according to Conindustria, were an excessive tax burden (cited by 84% of respondents in a business survey), followed by fuel shortages (75%), competition from imported products (64%), political uncertainty (56%), the macroeconomic environment (53%), and access to finance (46%).