The Venezuelan Enterprise: Current Situation, Challenges and Opportunities

Using Enterprise Survey data, this study describes the characteristics of current Venezuelan firms the survivors of one of the deepest economic contractions of modern historyacross different dimensions, such as access to infrastructure services, firms investment and financing, labor and skills, foreign trade, the legal environment, and firms innovation and performance. The study identifies the main challenges faced by the surviving firms (notably: macroeconomic and political instability, unreliability of basic services, lack of credit, and migration), while identifying some of the opportunities for these firms to exploit if a comprehensive recovery strategy for the country were to be implemented. In this sense, I find that the representative Venezuelan survivor firm has managed to internationalize through several channels (foreign ownership, exports, and international quality certifications), as well as to match skills with current business and market demands and keep innovating. The study also briefly analyzes some of the traditional determinants of (labor) productivity at the firm level, bringing the most interesting aspects to the fore so they can be explored further in more topic-focused research.