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By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON, June 25 (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund said it was monitoring developments in Venezuela after two powerful earthquakes hit the country, with thousands feared dead, and would remain engaged with Venezuelan authorities as they assessed their needs.

Venezuela's interim President Delcy Rodriguez said on Thursday that at least 164 people have died and nearly 1,000 were injured after major earthquakes hit the country.

She announced the creation of an initial emergency fund of $200 million using resources from the IMF to rebuild infrastructure, hospitals and housing.

"We've been closely engaged with the Venezuelan authorities and we will remain closely engaged with them as they assess the economic impact and the recovery needs for Venezuela," IMF spokeswoman Julie Kozack told a regular news briefing.

She said the discussions would touch on how the IMF could support the country as it recovers, but gave no details absent a full assessment of the damages.

The IMF and World Bank in April said they had resumed dealings with Venezuela that had been paused since 2019. The move paved the way for a full IMF assessment of Venezuela's economy for the first time in two decades and could eventually unlock access to $5 billion in its special drawing rights, or reserves, with the IMF, which had been frozen.

Kozack did not specify if the $200 million emergency fund announced by Rodriguez would come from those assets.

The IMF had not been involved in a debt restructuring announced by Venezuela in May, one of the largest-ever sovereign debt restructurings, Kozack said, adding that IMF officials were in contact with authorities on Venezuela's economic outlook.

She said the IMF stood ready to assist with the debt restructuring as needed.

Venezuela said in May it hired U.S.-based financial services firm Centerview to handle the sovereign debt restructuring. The Financial Times this week reported that Caracas was set to unveil that the debt pile was about $240 billion , significantly higher than previously estimated.

Kozack said there had been other cases in which the IMF was not involved in a debt restructuring, and it was never party to the actual discussions between a country and its creditors, but generally provided macroeconomic assessments and debt sustainability analyses.

"In cases where we have a program, it has been beneficial to help anchor the restructuring when the Fund has a program which is supported not just by our technical analysis but a full set of policies that the authorities have committed to implement," she said. "That has been, I think, a source of reassurance in some other cases."