CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) -- The Venezuelan Congress on Saturday
                  granted President Hugo Chavez emergency powers to push through
                  economic and social reforms which he says are needed to pull the
                  oil-dependent country out of its deep recession.

                  The Senate approved an enabling law that will give Chavez, a populist
                  former coup leader, the ability to legislate emergency economic measures by
                  decree for six months, without prior approval of the opposition-dominated
                  Congress.

                  The Chamber of Deputies had approved late on Friday these fast-track
                  special powers that Chavez had asked for on Feb. 17, two weeks after
                  assuming power, in order to slash a bulging fiscal deficit and foster foreign
                  investment.

                  The world's third largest oil exporter, Venezuela has been hit hard by a
                  slump in world oil prices. Chavez's new government inherited a $9 billion
                  budget shortfall this year, around 9 percent of the gross domestic product.

                  The economy contracted 0.7 percent in 1998 and Chavez, who has pledged
                  to improve the lot of the millions of underprivileged who voted for him, set
                  this week a conservative goal of zero economic growth this year.

                  The special powers law places emphasis on tax reforms and includes a 0.5
                  percent levy on bank transactions for one year and a value added tax to
                  replace a 16.5 percent wholesale and luxury tax. Congress allowed the
                  government to set its rate at between 8.0 and 16.5 percent. Chavez has said
                  it would be 15.5 percent.

                  The law also covers reforms to the social security system and proposals to
                  fuse a series of social programmes and state financial institutions, which
                  Chavez has denounced as mismanaged, bloated, inefficient and riddled with
                  corruption.

                  Legislators, whom Chavez accused on Thursday of dragging their feet over
                  the proposed reforms, deleted from the Enabling Law articles relating to the
                  public debt and the hydrocarbons industry, considering them either too
                  complex or too important to be approved by presidential decree.

                  The vote gave Chavez, whose nationalist, anti-corruption approach enjoys
                  strong support among Venezuela's poor, his first political victory since he
                  took office on a mandate to overhaul Venezuela's institutions.

                  The leftist retired military officer delivered a lengthy keynote speech on
                  Thursday in which he painted a very bleak picture of a country hit by 20
                  years of "economic disaster" and where "corruption is legalised."

                  Apart from the fast-track powers now in his hands, he has promoted the
                  main plank of his electoral platform, a popular assembly to re-write the 1961
                  constitution.

                  Venezuelans will vote in a referendum on April 25 on whether they want this
                  Constituent Assembly, which would be installed on July 5 and would sit for
                  up to six months.