India says it will not use Petro for the oil trade with Venezuela

Officials of the South American country offered to the local merchants the possibility of obtaining discounts of up to 30% in the purchase of oil, as long as it was paid with the Venezuelan cryptocurrency.

Local and international media reported that representatives of the government of India announced that the country has no plans to use Petro, a Venezuelan cryptocurrency, to trade crude with the South American nation.

The announcement was made by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sushma Swaraj, who during a press conference made reference to an order issued by the Central Bank of India, which prohibits the institutions of the country to carry out commercial operations with cryptocurrencies.

These statements come in response to the commercial offer made by the Venezuelan government to the Asian nation, since by the end of last month government officials held meetings in India with different actors, including the CEO of Coinsecure, Mohit Karla, who reported that the possibility was offered that the creditors of the cryptocurrency have a 30% discount at the time of investing the assets for the purchase of oil in the South American country.

The intention of the Venezuelan government itself was to reach agreements for the inclusion of Petro in the local platforms for the cryptocurrency trade, waiting for the digital asset to be acquired by local oil refineries to market crude oil from Venezuela, at a very high cost. lower than what is currently quoted in traditional markets.

With this resolution, the thesis of the Venezuelan economist Alexander Guerrero is confirmed, who during an interview conducted by the Venezuelan news portal www.runrun.es said that it was unlikely that the Indian oil company would accept payment with petros, since it operates in international markets and risks being subject to sanctions by the US Government. It is worth remembering that the United States issued a decree prohibiting all its citizens and companies from trading with the Venezuelan digital currency at the risk of being subject to legal measures, precisely because it considered the cryptocurrency as an attempt to evade the sanctions imposed on the country.

This would not be the first setback with which the Venezuelan government finds itself in its process of promoting the adoption of what would be "the first cryptocurrency officially launched by a country", given that due to the measures taken by the United States, the main exchange platforms that operate internationally have rejected outright the inclusion of the Venezuelan digital currency within its list of commercial assets. Such was the case of Bitfinex, whose executives issued a statement informing the community that Petro would not be marketed within its service.

To the above are added the doubts about the true nature of the digital asset promoted by the Venezuelan government, to which the Center for the Popularization of Economic Knowledge for Freedom (better known as CEDICE) considers as a mechanism that will be used by government figures to perpetuate in power in the face of political and economic difficulties that are experienced in the nation, ensuring that the Petro can not be considered a cryptocurrency, as well as the fact that its issuance and commercialization - which is done in foreign currency - only reveals the destruction suffered by the bolívar (official Venezuelan currency) during the presidential administration of Nicolás Maduro.