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LATIN AMERICA |
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Trade Between Venezuela and Argentina Up
Tenfold
CARACAS – Starting from a paltry $140
million in 2004, trade between Venezuela and
Argentina has grown more than tenfold in the
past five years and is projected to total
$1.7 billion in 2009, Venezuelan Finance
Minister Ali Rodriguez said Friday.
He said the expansion in bilateral trade
flowed from 2004 accords on cooperation in
energy and agriculture, Venezuela’s official
ABN news agency reported.
“We discovered that Venezuela is an energy
power with large exportable surpluses and
Argentina is a great agricultural power,
also with enormous exportable surpluses; we
needed food and they needed energy,”
Rodriguez said.
While Venezuela is the world’s fifth-leading
oil exporter and a key supplier to the
United States, Argentina is an agricultural
powerhouse.
Three months ago, the governments of
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and
Argentine counterpart Cristina Fernandez
signed a score of additional economic
accords valued at $1.1 billion.
One of those agreements calls for Venezuela
to buy 10,000 motor vehicles from Argentina
in lieu of importing them from neighboring
Colombia, with which the Chavez
administration is at odds over a
Bogota-Washington pact allowing U.S.
military units access to Colombian bases.
Caracas and Buenos Aires also signed a deal
this year to create a joint river-transport
venture, Fluviomar, to facilitate the
exchange of Venezuela’s petroleum products
for agricultural goods from Argentina and
other countries in the Southern Cone region.
EFE |
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