The International Monetary Fund and World Bank convened extraordinary sessions last week to assess Venezuela's economic crisis, as the United States moves to restore the South American nation's access to international financial institutions, Bloomberg reported citing sources familiar with the talks.

The unscheduled meetings, which were not publicly announced in advance, preceded talks this week between US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the heads of the IMF and World Bank regarding re-establishing formal relations with Venezuela in the wake of the ouster of President Nicolas Maduro. The Inter-American Development Bank also held a similar extraordinary session on the Venezuelan situation, the sources said.

Bessent told Reuters on January 9 that the US may lift additional sanctions on Venezuela as early as next week to facilitate oil sales. He also indicated that approximately $4.9bn in Venezuelan assets held as IMF Special Drawing Rights could be unfrozen to provide liquidity to the country's central bank.

The intervention comes as Venezuela faces a severe currency crisis. The official dollar exchange rate reached VES330.37 on January 13, representing a 504% year-on-year depreciation, with economists warning the country risks sliding back into hyperinflation. Parallel market rates using cryptocurrencies have climbed as high as VES781 per dollar. The bolivar has plunged 20% on the black market since Maduro's toppling, prompting many Venezuelans to hold onto US dollars and avoid spending them on daily expenses, as they anticipate further devaluation of the local currency.

The IMF forecasts that yearly inflation will skyrocket from approximately 270% in 2025 to exceed 680% in 2026, evoking the era of extreme hyperinflation that destabilised the oil-rich nation between 2016 and 2019 and triggered mass emigration. 

During the extraordinary meetings, institutional directors focused on Venezuela's actual economic conditions and the scarcity of reliable official statistics necessary for robust technical analysis. Venezuela has not completed the IMF's standard annual Article IV review since 2004, and the organisation issued a censure statement against the country in 2018 for failing to provide regular information. Venezuela's central bank has not released official inflation figures since October 2024.

The Treasury Department has expressed willingness to convert Venezuela's SDR assets to dollars to support reconstruction. SDRs are international reserve assets allocated to IMF member countries based on their economic position.

However, accessing these funds requires resolving the international recognition status of Venezuelan authorities. Following the capture of Maduro by US special forces on January 3, his vice president Delcy Rodríguez has assumed power.

But many governments still have to recognise Caracas' new leader, and the IMF requires a clear majority of membership to acknowledge a specific government before it can represent the country's interests at the Fund.

President Donald Trump told Fox News last week that Venezuela could only hold elections after the US finishes rebuilding the country. "They couldn't have an election," Trump said. "They wouldn't even know how to have an election right now."

Trump confirmed that Rodríguez had agreed to turn over between 30 and 50mn barrels of oil to the US, which would be sold at market prices with proceeds controlled by Washington to benefit both nations' populations.

"We need to leverage and control those oil sales to drive the changes that simply must happen in Venezuela," US Energy Secretary Chris Wright stated, adding that Washington would maintain control over oil sales "indefinitely" to ensure proceeds benefit the Venezuelan people.

Trump also said his government was "working well with the leadership" of Venezuela, and that Rodríguez in particular had been "very good," without elaborating.

“Delcy Rodríguez has long been the regime’s outward-facing fixer, the ‘good cop’ meant to reassure markets and foreign interlocutors,” Daniel Lansberg-Rodriguez, Venezuela's managing partner of Aurora Macro Strategies, told the FT. “Now her role suddenly resembles something closer to a probationary arrangement, with the United States acting as a distant parole officer.”

Relations between Venezuela and multilateral lenders soured from the 2000s, when late leftist president Hugo Chávez lashed out at the IMF and World Bank and ordered cancellation of Venezuela's debts to both institutions. Under Maduro's administration, this isolation deepened, effectively cutting off Venezuela from international financial mechanisms.