Venezuela
Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...
uses the
UTC−04:00 time offset, and they had previously used
UTC−04:30 from 9 December 2007 until 30 April 2016.
The time is commonly called ''Venezuelan Standard Time'' (VET), and legally referred to as ''Hora Legal de Venezuela'' (HLV) or Venezuela's Legal Time. The HLV is administered by the Navigation and Hydrography Service, in the Cagigal Naval Observatory, Caracas.
The official time zone of Venezuela is determined by meridian 60° west of
Greenwich
Greenwich ( , ,) is a town in south-east London, England, within the ceremonial county of Greater London. It is situated east-southeast of Charing Cross.
Greenwich is notable for its maritime history and for giving its name to the Greenwich ...
, UK.
UTC−04:30 was formerly the official time zone in Venezuela from 1912 to 1965, when the government changed it in order to adopt
meridian 60° UTC−04:00, which passes through Punta de Playa,
Delta Amacuro State
Delta Amacuro State ( es, Estado Delta Amacuro, ) is one of the 23 states of Venezuela, and is the location of the Orinoco Delta. The Paria Gulf and the Atlantic Ocean are found to the north, Bolívar State is found to the south, the Atlantic ...
. It was changed again to
UTC−04:30 from 2007 to 2016.
Background
The Venezuela's Legal Time Service was founded in answer to the need of a
standard time
Standard time is the synchronisation of clocks within a geographical region to a single time standard, rather than a local mean time standard. Generally, standard time agrees with the local mean time at some meridian that passes through the ...
across the country, located approximately between meridians 60° W and 75° W, corresponding to
UTC−04:00 and
UTC−05:00 with respect to the
prime meridian
A prime meridian is an arbitrary meridian (a line of longitude) in a geographic coordinate system at which longitude is defined to be 0°. Together, a prime meridian and its anti-meridian (the 180th meridian in a 360°-system) form a great ...
. In 1912, the meridian 67° 30' W was adopted as the first geographical reference for a national time system. The HLV was given to the National Telegraphy Central Office as an astronomical time standard, corresponding to GMT−04:30. During the 1930s, the broadcasting services began time reports synchronized with the HLV. In 1965 the Republic of Venezuela Congress established meridian 60° W, near Punta de Playa in Delta Amacuro state, as official, since the previous one did not fulfill the international requirement for time standards of being based on integer differences with the GMT. Beginning then, Venezuela Standard Time was
UTC−04:00; this meant the addition of thirty more minutes to the previous time.
This modification was carried out based on research from the ''La Electricidad de Caracas (Caracas Electricity) Company''. The results indicated that adding thirty minutes to the previous time would save energy use, since all morning activities were going to be carried out in the presence of sunlight, and there would be an additional half an hour of sunlight in the afternoons.
Current standard time
In December 2007,
Hugo Chávez
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (; 28 July 1954 – 5 March 2013) was a Venezuelan politician who was president of Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013, except for a brief period in 2002. Chávez was also leader of the Fifth Republ ...
changed, via decree, the official meridian to meridian 67° 30' W, the same used between 1912 and 1965. As result, the standard time was
UTC−04:30, half an hour behind the previous time
which eventually led to an increase in energy consumption.
On 15 April 2016, President
Nicolás Maduro
Nicolás Maduro Moros (; born 23 November 1962) is a Venezuelan politician and president of Venezuela since 2013, with his presidency under dispute since 2019.
Beginning his working life as a bus driver, Maduro rose to become a trade union ...
announced that Venezuela would reverse Chávez's time change due to the
shortage of electricity (the country's hydroelectric power has been hit by low water levels
) in Venezuela, with a return to
UTC−04:00 which began on 1 May 2016 at 03:00:00.
IANA time zone database
The IANA time zone database
The tz database is a collaborative compilation of information about the world's time zones, primarily intended for use with computer programs and operating systems. Paul Eggert is its current editor and maintainer, with the organizational back ...
contains one zone for Venezuela in the file zone.tab
This is a list of time zones from release of the tz database.
Legend Type
* Canonical - The primary, preferred zone name.
* Link - An alternative name (alias) which links to a canonical zone.
* Link - A standard Link (as above). The dagger symb ...
, named America/Caracas.
References
External links
Current local time in Caracas
BBC News: Venezuela creates own time zone
Timeanddate.com
New Time Zone Should Complement Territorial Reorganization Bill. Mathaba, 2007-09-22
{{coord missing, Venezuela