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The Venezuela Mining Report provides industry strategists, service companies, company analysts and consultants, government departments, trade associations and regulatory bodies with BMI's independent, 5-year mining industry forecasts and competitive intelligence on leading mining companies in Venezuela.

Each Report has been researched at source, and features latest-available data and forecasts to end-2012 covering all headline indicators for mining; company rankings and competitive landscapes covering mining exploration and production; and analysis of latest industry developments, trends and regulatory issues

In BMI's newly-released Venezuela Mining Report 2007, we predict that the nation's mining industry will remain broadly unchanged in size over the next five years. We believe that the value of output will grow strongly in 2006 (thanks predominantly to higher commodity prices) to around US$3.7bn. Going forwards, though, the effects of higher production volumes – and especially of gold at Crystallex International Corporation's Las Cristinas project – should be offset by softness in mineral prices. In world terms, Venezuela is a major player in the energy industry. However, it is fairly unimportant as a supplier of non-fuel minerals.

Including companies that are active in energy and construction materials, there are around 30 companies in Venezuela's mining and minerals sector. This number includes energy giant Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) and 11 of the 15 operating subsidiaries of Corporación Venezolana de Guayana (CVG). PDVSA is a state-owned monopoly. CVG, as we explain in this report, is a government agency charged with the social and economic development of much of Eastern Venezuela. In the cement industry, which – like the energy sector – falls outside the scope of this report, players include local subsidiaries of Holcim, CEMEX and Lafarge. In general, though, major multi-nationals are thin on the ground. Steel maker Sivensa is the only significant Venezuelan listed company.

Venezuela's mining/minerals sector is not important relative to exports, GDP or total employment. Venezuela is emphatically not the only country in Latin America (or, for that matter other parts of the world) where government policy and rhetoric have appeared to discourage the participation of major multi-national companies. However, it does seem that Venezuela is a country in which the government (and, perhaps, public opinion) is particularly hostile to inwards foreign investment. On top of this, it is clear that CVG and its subsidiaries are responsible primarily for meeting social, as opposed to commercial, objectives.

These themes run through many recent news stories. There are two other themes, neither of which is germane for the long-term development of the Venezuelan mining industry. Firstly, employees and community stakeholders often enjoy considerable power vis-Ã -vis employers in negotiations over pay and/or other benefits. The other is that decisions relating to the industry (whether made by the government in its own right or by one its agencies, such as CVG) appear sometimes to be driven by diplomatic/political (as opposed to economic or commercial) considerations.