If you live in Venezuela and want to fly abroad, good luck.
The currency market restrictions in the country have created more problems than solutions. The government offers dollars at a 6.3 rate, but only for a minuscule quantity, $3000 if you apply and get approved to go visit the United States. This has lead to the emergence of a black market with an exchange rate six or seven times higher than the national one.
If you go to the Caracas airport, you might notice something odd. Many of the planes fly with an astonishing amount of empty seats. Furthermore, if you want to book a flight, you are going to have to do it months in advance.
Why does this happen? It’s because of a new practice known locally as "el raspao," or "the scrape." It begins by buying your plane ticket and applying for government (or CADIVI) dollars. When you get approval, you receive $500 in cash and $2500 in your credit card. Then you go to the US and find a special business that swipes your credit card and gives you the money in cash, instead of making a purchase. When you do come back to Venezuela, the dollars that you didn’t spend, you sell in the back market for seven times the official rate. With the money you earn, it covers the flight, the cost of staying abroad a couple days, and you will still have loads of money to spare.
However, some people don’t even get on the flights. They send their credit card with someone who does the process for them and brings the cash back. Some less ethical business men can score huge amounts of money by doing this. They can get poor people to give them their credit cards with CADIVI dollars. The only problem, is those same people come back with the dollars, sell them on the black market, and only give a small fraction back to the owners of the credit cards. It takes advantage of the government's controls and people’s ignorance of the exchange rate.
As a result, flight agencies are overbooking flights by considerably higher numbers than before. The government officials are also mad at the emergence of this practice. Some encourage civilians to report this sort of activity, there’s even a dedicated phone line for this purpose. Yet others encourage a new control that would match flight lists with those requesting foreign exchange to track the people who don’t show up. Not everyone finds the humor in the situation.
Information by http://news.yahoo.com/boat-venezuela-flights-booked-full-months-141950761.html;_ylt=A2KJ3Cchl01SSyYAVTDQtDMD
By: Cesar Rincon
The currency market restrictions in the country have created more problems than solutions. The government offers dollars at a 6.3 rate, but only for a minuscule quantity, $3000 if you apply and get approved to go visit the United States. This has lead to the emergence of a black market with an exchange rate six or seven times higher than the national one.
If you go to the Caracas airport, you might notice something odd. Many of the planes fly with an astonishing amount of empty seats. Furthermore, if you want to book a flight, you are going to have to do it months in advance.
Why does this happen? It’s because of a new practice known locally as "el raspao," or "the scrape." It begins by buying your plane ticket and applying for government (or CADIVI) dollars. When you get approval, you receive $500 in cash and $2500 in your credit card. Then you go to the US and find a special business that swipes your credit card and gives you the money in cash, instead of making a purchase. When you do come back to Venezuela, the dollars that you didn’t spend, you sell in the back market for seven times the official rate. With the money you earn, it covers the flight, the cost of staying abroad a couple days, and you will still have loads of money to spare.
However, some people don’t even get on the flights. They send their credit card with someone who does the process for them and brings the cash back. Some less ethical business men can score huge amounts of money by doing this. They can get poor people to give them their credit cards with CADIVI dollars. The only problem, is those same people come back with the dollars, sell them on the black market, and only give a small fraction back to the owners of the credit cards. It takes advantage of the government's controls and people’s ignorance of the exchange rate.
As a result, flight agencies are overbooking flights by considerably higher numbers than before. The government officials are also mad at the emergence of this practice. Some encourage civilians to report this sort of activity, there’s even a dedicated phone line for this purpose. Yet others encourage a new control that would match flight lists with those requesting foreign exchange to track the people who don’t show up. Not everyone finds the humor in the situation.
Information by http://news.yahoo.com/boat-venezuela-flights-booked-full-months-141950761.html;_ylt=A2KJ3Cchl01SSyYAVTDQtDMD
By: Cesar Rincon