Unlike other frontier markets that have a GDP per capita in the range where the Venezuelan one is today after years of consecutive economic contraction, Venezuela already has an in-built infrastructure, an industrial and technological know-how and multi-billion dollar private savings (abroad) which no other country in the frontier market category has.

This means that Venezuela has the potential to grow its economy at much faster rates than that of most countries in the world and to generate extraordinary returns for investors.

Venezuela is located in the Western hemisphere, a geography free of international conflicts. Its location at the northern tip of South America allows for shorter shipping times to North America’s East Coast and Europe than from other South American countries. A container ship takes approximately 4 days from Venezuela’s main port (Puerto Cabello) to Miami. It would only take 7 days to Houston or New York, and only 15 days to Antwerp, Belgium. Venezuela is also a few day’s sail from the Panama Canal.

Substantial oil revenues over the decades allowed for several tens of thousands of Venezuelans to attend higher education programs around the world. 

Starting with the Fundayacucho scholarship program in the 1970s, and continuing with the CADIVI funds for study programs during the last decade, Venezuela funded the education of one of Latin America’s most globalized and highly qualified workforces. 

The spectrum of areas of specialization of these individuals ranges from petroleum and high-tech engineers, to medical doctors and scholars. Just to provide two examples of the diaspora’s technical quality, MIT’s current president and Harvard’s Center for International Development’s director are Venezuelans who completed graduate studies funded by Fundayacucho and currently live abroad. 

Although a significant percentage of these globally trained professionals now lives abroad, another part remains in Venezuela, and the prospect of an economic turnaround could trigger the partial return of one of the most skilled diasporas ever seen.

Venezuela has a cosmopolitan culture which has historically been open to foreign cultures since colonial times. 

Given its proximity to the Netherlands Antilles, illegal trading during the 18th century allowed colonial inhabitants of today’s Venezuela to be exposed to liberal ideas in a way not feasible for inhabitants of other parts of today’s Latin America. 

Venezuela's oil prosperity in the early 20th century encouraged one of the largest inward migrations in the history of Latin America, in terms of the size of the host population. 

Such flow of immigrants increased after World War II and made Venezuela a cultural melting pot which mixed Italians, Portuguese, Spaniards, Germans, Lebanese, Syrians, as well as people from other European countries, the Middle East and Latin America. 

The rise of Venezuela's economic fortunes throughout the 20th century accentuated Venezuela's interrelationship with the world, as Venezuelans were able to study abroad by the thousands and travel the world.

Venezuela grew during the 20th century to become Latin America’s richest country. During several decades Venezuela had export revenues that were far greater than those of several peers in the region. Most of those funds were invested in infrastructure, in education (both in Venezuelan universities and abroad through the region’s largest foreign post-graduate scholarship program), and spent in the local economy. 

apital account deficits, particularly since the 1980s, were driven mainly by locals who preferred to save in hard currency abroad. The amount of Venezuelan private savings abroad has been estimated by various sources to be in the range of US$425 to US$500 billion, which is several times larger than the foreign savings of locals in regional peers such as Peru and Colombia. 

Este conjunto de ahorros representa una fuente clave potencial de capital que podría complementar e impulsar el efecto de futuras inversiones extranjeras, ya que parte de estos ahorros extranjeros podrían eventualmente regresar a medida que las condiciones mejoren en Venezuela. La magnitud de estos fondos son una ventaja potencial para Venezuela que ningún otro país comparable tiene.