Venezuela's Debt Piling-Up.

LAHT.
Faced with the drop in oil prices from all-time highs, Venezuela has renewed borrowing to shore up the gap in the national finances. One of the reasons -- “it’s an election year,” notes an economist.
Calculations show domestic and foreign debt repayments totalling some $19.6 billion between the second half of this year and 2011.
Of this, roughly $10 billion will be due on foreign debt, with a further $9.6 billion on the domestic account. The overall total of state debt is estimated at $50.3 billion, although this apparently doesn’t include the cost of compensating private companies taken over under Chávez’s repeated nationalizations and expropriations.