Shal­iza?Has­sanali

Oil-rich Venezuela, which is faced with a se­vere food cri­sis, will soon bring re­lief to its cit­i­zens by pur­chas­ing US$50 mil­lion in goods from T&T.

Con­fir­ma­tion came yes­ter­day from Venezuela Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro at a joint press con­fer­ence with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's.

In ad­dress­ing the me­dia, some of whom were from Venezuela, Maduro de­scribed his meet­ing with Row­ley and his Cab­i­net as fruit­ful and suc­cess­ful, promis­ing to strength­en ties and the re­la­tion­ship with T&T go­ing for­ward.

"We need to con­tin­ue work­ing hard in the fu­ture to fur­ther our re­la­tions in the premise of prin­ci­ples of re­spect, broth­er­hood and co-op­er­a­tion," Maduro told a smil­ing Row­ley.

Among the is­sues both men dis­cussed were trade, se­cu­ri­ty and repa­tri­a­tion of cit­i­zens who are cur­rent­ly de­tained in pris­ons on both sides.

The T&T Gov­ern­ment al­so signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing with Maduro to pur­chase gas from Venezuela, which Maduro said stood to ben­e­fit both coun­tries.

"We look for­ward from Trinidad and To­ba­go to pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant re­lief to the peo­ple of Venezuela. This re­lief to come from a sup­ply of man­u­fac­tured goods from Trinidad and To­ba­go," Row­ley told Maduro, as he shook his head in ap­proval.

"We have cre­at­ed a joint ven­ture that would be re­spon­si­ble to con­duct all the in­vest­ments re­quired in or­der to tap those re­sources for that ben­e­fit of both coun­tries.

"We have al­so de­cid­ed to in­crease the trade flow be­tween the two na­tions. We have al­ready es­tab­lished the con­tacts and very soon, through a re­volv­ing fund with US$50 mil­lion, we will be able to strength­en the flow of trade be­tween Trinidad and the East­ern part of Venezuela," Maduro said, in de­liv­er­ing his speech to Row­ley and his Cab­i­net.

Fol­low­ing Maduro's ad­dress, Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon spoke about the arrange­ments that would be put in place for Venezuela to ob­tain much need­ed food.

She said the US$50 mil­lion fund Venezuela had es­tab­lished would be used to pur­chase man­u­fac­tured goods from T&T, which would be sent to the east­ern states of Venezuela, which have been faced with a short­age of food for months now.

To get the ball rolling, Gopee-Scoon said her min­istry had for­ward­ed a list of all goods man­u­fac­tured in T&T to Venezuela.

"It is from that list, I be­lieve from next week, we would have the vice-min­is­ter from the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try in Venezuela vis­it­ing with us, along with some pri­vate sec­tor per­sons. They are go­ing to be look­ing at which items they would want to be sent to Venezuela," she added.

Gopee-Scoon said the time­line for the trade to start would be­gin as soon as the goods were made avail­able.

Among the pri­or­i­ty items Venezuela had re­quest­ed, Gopee-Scoon said, were but­ter, chick­en, pork, ketchup, rice and black beans.

"These are things that would have to be fleshed out. I be­lieve they are go­ing to choose eight pri­or­i­ty items which they would want us to send to them. We are go­ing to have all this worked out when we have a del­e­ga­tion from Venezuela and put up all the mech­a­nisms in place so that we can fa­cil­i­tate easy pas­sage of goods from here to there," she added.

Al­though they have asked for pork, Gopee-Scoon said that was one item T&T im­ports which they would have to look at.

Ini­tial­ly, Gopee Scoon said the Gov­ern­ment had looked at Venezuela ex­chang­ing pe­tro­le­um for goods from T&T but that plan did not work out.

"How­ev­er, this is a dif­fer­ent arrange­ment. We are speak­ing now of the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment pay­ing for goods from Trinidad and To­ba­go. So a fund has been set up and the Pres­i­dent of Venezuela did in fact speak about it.

"That is how we are go­ing to kick off the trade. I be­lieve it will be on a re­volv­ing ba­sis. So this fund will be fed in­to and re­plen­ished and so on," Gopee-Scoon said.

Asked if the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to of­fer Maduro goods at a sub­sidised price, giv­en the coun­try's on­go­ing food cri­sis, Gopee-Scoon said: "We have not looked at price at all. There was no re­quest at all but there will be some talks in go­ing for­ward from to­day's dis­cus­sions."

She said the goods would be avail­able at cost price by the sup­pli­ers and promised that pay­ments to sup­pli­ers would be easy and swift.