The announcement by Francisco Carrasquero, president of the National Electoral Council, came after Venezuela's opposition accused officials of dragging their feet in setting a date.
Officials rejected an earlier petition for technical reasons.
The opposition must gather more than 2.4 million signatures to request the recall against Chavez.
Venezuela's Constitution allows recall referendums after the midpoint of a president's six-year term - which was Aug. 19 for Chavez.
According to the National Electoral Council, the earliest the presidential recall could be held would be March 2004.
The Organization of American States has endorsed the presidential recall as a peaceful and democratic means of ending tensions that triggered a failed 2002 coup and two-month strike earlier this year.
The opposition accuses Chavez of accumulating power, ignoring rampant graft in public administration and dividing Venezuelans along class lines.
Chavez, who survived a brief 2002 coup, claims a corrupt political elite is conspiring against his leftist government. [End]
A foreign diplomat said that a school gymnasium in the south of La Paz, and under army protection, had been opened to house those who want to leave the city.
Most of the foreigners are cooped up in their rooms in hotels next to the central Plaza San Francisco.
"On Monday morning we saw all the shops in the street had pulled down their shutters, our hotel was barricaded with sandbags and the first tear gas grenades went off around 11 o'clock in the street against demonstrators protesting the massacres the day before in El Alto," said Coninne Munsch, one of 60 stranded French tourists.
Munsch and the other foreigners awoke Monday morning to fiery demonstrations raging in the streets around their hotels.
Instead of some holiday bargain-hunting and snapping picturesque street corners, tourists have had to pick their way through the debris of pitched street battles and numerous road blocks in the four or five streets that make up the main tourist centre.
"One can find water, ham, cheese, bread, coffee, for the moment it's available," said Antoine Esteve, who arrived in La Paz last Friday.
The capital is threatened with food shortages due to the protests and roadblocks which have shut down key transport routes across Bolivia.
"It was very dramatic," said another tourist who arrived last Thursday.***