Time in Venezuela

The official time zone of Venezuela is determined by meridian 60° west of Greenwich, UK.

UTC−04:30 was the official time zone in Venezuela from 1912 to 1965, when the government changed it in order to adopt meridian 60° UTC−04:00 time, which passes through Punta de Playa, Delta Amacuro State. It was changed again to UTC−04:30 from 2007 to 2016.

Background

Venezuela's Legal Time Service was founded to answer the need for a standard time 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. 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 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Beginning then, Venezuela Standard Time was UTC−04:00; this meant the addition of thirty 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.