Venezuela's acting president Delcy Rodriguez has formally asked the International Monetary Fund to release nearly $5bn in frozen assets, testing the limits of a diplomatic rapprochement that has forced the country's ruling Chavista movement to abandon decades of ideological hostility towards the Washington-based lender.

Rodriguez disclosed that she had raised the issue directly with IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva in a phone call on April 21, asking the Fund to unblock approximately $4.9bn in special drawing rights (SDRs) that Venezuela holds with the institution. "We have $5bn in the IMF so that we can recover vital infrastructure, electricity, and water," she said at a public event in Falcón state.

In a statement on X, Georgieva described the exchange as “productive,” saying the two had discussed "next steps" in the Fund's engagement with Caracas, "with a focus on data, policy advice and capacity development," and reaffirming the IMF's commitment to supporting the Venezuelan people.

The SDR claim traces back to an emergency financing request submitted by then-president Nicolas Maduro in March 2020, intended to fund Venezuela's healthcare response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The IMF declined to disburse the funds, withholding recognition from the Maduro government. Venezuelan representatives have since pressed the case in diplomatic forums including talks held in Barbados, Mexico and Qatar.

The request comes days after the IMF formally restored ties with Caracas on April 17, following a membership poll that extended recognition to Rodriguez's interim administration — itself the product of a US operation that removed Maduro from power in January. The World Bank followed suit the same day. The Fund confirmed that Venezuela's SDR holdings, which it valued at approximately $4.9bn, would become accessible as a result.

Rodriguez has been at pains to separate the SDR claim from any broader embrace of IMF orthodoxy. She has ruled out taking on a loan with the institution, and her economy vice president Calixto Ortega has separately rejected any adjustment or debt programme. "Venezuela knows what to do responsibly with its blocked resources," Rodriguez said. "Not only with the International Monetary Fund. We have blocked resources in other countries; our gold is in the United Kingdom." The government has outlined plans to direct the funds towards electricity and water infrastructure, macroeconomic stabilisation and restoring workers' purchasing power, under a framework it calls the Seven Transformations Plan.

The rhetorical gymnastics required to sell this pivot domestically are considerable. For much of the past two decades, hostility towards the IMF was a cornerstone of Chavista identity. Former president Hugo Chávez made a point of clearing Venezuela's IMF obligations ahead of schedule and distancing the country from the institution's influence. Maduro went even further, severing relations entirely in 2019 when the Fund sided with the opposition-controlled legislature over his administration. The image of the IMF as a vehicle for imperial economic subjugation was a staple of official regime discourse for a generation.

That inheritance now sits awkwardly with the Rodriguez government's courtship of the same institution. Interior minister and PSUV secretary general Diosdado Cabello, one of the few hardliners still in office, acknowledged the discomfort openly on April 22, conceding that some within revolutionary ranks were troubled by the rapprochement. His defence was strikingly pragmatic. "The only way we will get back the $5bn that belongs to the people of Venezuela is if we join the IMF system; if anyone has a better idea, let them propose it," he said, insisting that neither debt nor austerity was on the table.

Georgieva has indicated that rebuilding Venezuela's macroeconomic data, largely absent from IMF systems for the better part of two decades, will be a prerequisite for deeper engagement, framing institutional capacity building as the Fund's immediate priority. That condition points to the scale of the technical work required before any disbursement could realistically be considered, regardless of the political signals being exchanged.

Meanwhile, Washington looms large in the background, its role largely unacknowledged but difficult to overstate. The US Treasury eased sanctions on Venezuela's central bank last week, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has described the IMF's engagement as aimed at making Venezuela "look more like a normal economy," a phrase that neatly encapsulates both the ambition driving the process and the distance that remains to be covered.