Belarusian ambassador comments on effort to restore bilateral trade with Venezuela
4 December 2023, 14:42
According to Ambassador Andrei Molchan, a significant infrastructure of Belarusian industrial, machine-building, and agricultural potential has been built in Venezuela. The leaders of the two countries came to an understanding that Venezuela needs many of Belarusian developments, but the northern neighbor of Venezuela was not delighted with the fact that Hugo Chavez, and then Nicolas Maduro, pursued an independent, sovereign policy.
"There came problems on the part of Washington. Serious financial, economic and political sanctions were imposed, which brought the country's economy into a rather crisis situation. The flow of funds to the state budget stopped. Naturally, in the absence of these funds, the financing of projects stopped. In the current circumstances, when a lot of Western restrictions and sanctions have been imposed on the Venezuelan government, state-owned enterprises and organizations, the embassy is working to find solvent partners among private businesses and private companies. Here the layer of such companies is quite impressive. By the end of this year, we will have more or less working options that will allow us to restore bilateral trade. But it took time,"
According to him, Venezuela has a colossal potential in all areas, significant deposits of oil and other important resources, and has access to the sea. "The country has a warm regard for Belarus. When you say that you are from Belarus, the first answer is: ‘Oh, Lukashenko! Hi, how you are doing.' Our two nations, our two states, our two peoples should work as closely as possible," Ambassador Andrei Molchan said.
As BelTA reported, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko received Venezuela's Vice President – Minister of Planning Ricardo Menendez in Minsk on 28 November. “Today's main goal is to restore dynamics, overcome hindrances that exist on this road,” Ricardo Menendez told the media after the meeting. “Certain accomplishments have already been secured. We are now talking about advancing our relations to new heights. After we got stronger in the fight against sanctions, we have to move forward through joint efforts and plan a new stage of our joint activities for the next ten years.” According to Ricardo Menendez, the sides are now focused on matters of mutual interest: “First of all, we are talking about rebooting the joint ventures for making tractors and automobiles. There is interest in cooperation in petrochemical industry. The matter of establishing logistic ties is very important. We are now working on all of it.”
It is a common fact that a Belarusian-Venezuelan joint venture has been set up in Venezuela's territory to make up to 10,000 tractors and up to 5,000 trucks per annum. By the way, it is the largest enterprise in this region. “We are talking not only about the production of these vehicles but also about selling them domestically and in neighboring countries,” Ricardo Menendez noted
