Chavez seeks special powers, pushes nationalization

CARACAS, Jan 8 (Reuters) President Hugo Chavez called on Venezuela's Congress today to grant him special powers, launched a far-reaching package of nationalizations and promised to strip the central bank of its autonomy.

Chavez has followed his landslide reelection last month with pledges to deepen what he calls a socialist revolution.

The opposition says the anti-US leader is seeking to create a Cuban-style single-party state, a charge he refutes.

Chavez said he would submit a ''revolutionary enabling law'' to lawmakers through which he would be able to pass bills by decree to accelerate economic reform.

''We are making the final revisions so we can send it to the National Assembly in the next few days to request special powers,'' he said in a speech at the swearing in of new cabinet ministers.

Chavez, in power since 1999, said he would nationalize telecommunications firm CANTV and unspecified energy companies in the fourth biggest oil exporter to the United States.

''These disconcerting policy announcements represent a clear turn into deeper nationalist and interventionist policies, which can lead to further erosion of business confidence and the country's macro and institutional fundamentals,'' said economist Alberto Ramos in a Goldman Sachs research note.

STATE PROPERTY Continuing his nationalizing rhetoric, Chavez said the heavy crude projects of the Orinoco Belt in would become ''state property,'' referring to plants that process heavy crude oil from the Orinoco region in eastern Venezuela to make it suitable for refining into fuel.

These Orinoco projects involve foreign companies such as Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Statoil and Conoco Phillips.

Venezuela has been pushing to have a majority stake in these projects and it was not immediately clear whether Chavez was suggesting something stronger with his call for them to become state property.

Chavez said central bank autonomy could not continue and called the institution's independence ''disastrous.'' ''The central bank must not be autonomous, that is a neoliberal idea,'' he said.

Chavez has met resistance from central bank directors who object to the leftist president dipping into state coffers for lavish social spending of oil wealth, which wins him supporters but stokes rampant inflation.

The president has also sparred with the central bank over the calculation of Venezuelan's 17 percent annual inflation. He wants data included from state-subsidized stores that would douse the runaway figures.

Chavez is pulling the disparate parties that make up his government into a single party, sparking accusations that he is seeking a Communist-style system. He denies the charge, saying he will always allow opposition.

But giving ammunition to those who say he is centralizing the state, he has said only those loyal to his movement can serve in the army or work in the giant state oil company.

Reuters DKS VP0325