Published: Wednesday, December 26, 2012 18:37 (GMT-0400) More news from Venezuela

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Venezuela aims to become a leading producer of minerals, but their ability to do so is in doubt, according to Maplecroft principal analyst for Latin America, James Lockhart-Smith.

Specifically, "the Venezuelan government has recently made ​​announcements about comprehensive development of the provision of services related to PDVSA and the oil sector regarding anything you need a lot of steel, so this will be very important for the production iron ore and nickel, "the analyst told BNamericas referring to efforts to gradually increase the production of state steelmaker Sidor and other basic materials companies.

"The Venezuelan government is moving full speed using these companies to try to increase production of metals and, obviously, it is associated with mining," he said.

The situation is much the same with respect to gold, as demonstrated by last year's repatriation of gold reserves of the country and the nationalization of the yellow metal. While arbitration is pending before the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) of the World Bank with Crystallex International (TSX, AMEX: KRY) for canceling the contract mining operation that Toronto had this company for the mine Gold Las Cristinas , the Venezuelan government in September signed the first joint venture agreement under the law of nationalization of gold with Citic Group, Chinese capital, to pursue the joint development of the mine.

While the government's vision of being able to use and develop their resources is positive, history indicates that difficulties could traverse.

"They know they have natural resources. Holding hands with resource nationalism tends to emerge this rather optimistic belief that resources can be exploited as a government," said Lockhart-Smith. However, "we have observed long-term Venezuela usually have trouble getting their state enterprises to operate effectively and what is usually observed a decline in production and greater inefficiency."

To read a more detailed interview with James Lockhart-Smith on risks for miners in Venezuela, click here .