Raphael John-Lall

Af­ter trade be­tween T&T and Venezuela plum­met­ed by 99.85 per­cent over the last five years, Venezue­lan non-en­er­gy ex­ports are once again be­gin­ning to in­crease to T&T.

Ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics from Venezuela’s Na­tion­al Cen­tre for For­eign Com­merce (CEN­COEX), while the bal­ance of trade be­tween T&T and Venezuela in 2018 was US$25,317,435 by 2022 it had col­lapsed to US$37,484.

As trade is once again grow­ing be­tween the two coun­tries, Venezuela ex­port­ed 3,000 tonnes of bulk salt to T&T in Sep­tem­ber.

Pre­vi­ous­ly in Au­gust, Venezuela ex­port­ed 8,000 tonnes of ag­gre­gate ma­te­ri­als to T&T.

The Busi­ness Guardian reached out to the Venezue­lan Em­bassy ask­ing what agency in T&T re­ceived the bulk salt and the Em­bassy did con­firm the ship­ment, how­ev­er, up to press time, it did not pro­vide ad­di­tion­al de­tails.

Bulk salt ship­ping usu­al­ly refers to the trans­porta­tion of large quan­ti­ties of salt, which is a wide­ly used com­mod­i­ty in var­i­ous in­dus­tries in­clud­ing food pro­duc­tion, wa­ter treat­ment, de-ic­ing and chem­i­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to the Venezue­lan New­pa­per, El Ul­ti­mas Noti­cias, The M/N SUIZE Q ves­sel set sail with 3,000 tonnes of bulk salt from the dock of the Araya Com­plex, Su­cre state to T&T in Sep­tem­ber.

The In­sta­gram page of the Gov­ern­ment of the Venezue­lan state of Su­cre ex­plained that this ex­port of salt comes af­ter ten years of in­ac­tiv­i­ty and no ex­ports of salt from Su­cre.

“This is an achieve­ment that stood out and was pos­si­ble thanks to the agree­ments es­tab­lished with the com­pa­ny Dell Ac­qua, Cor­po­su­cre and the Port of Su­cre. It is as part of the ex­port ac­tiv­i­ties pro­mot­ed by the Gov­ern­ment of the state of Su­cre to lever­age the eco­nom­ic and pro­duc­tive growth of the re­gion.”

The state­ment on the In­sta­gram page added: “The re­ac­ti­va­tion of ex­ports not on­ly dri­ves the growth of the salt sec­tor, but al­so strength­ens in­ter­na­tion­al trade re­la­tions with­in the frame­work of the Gran Mariscal de Ay­acu­cho plan led by the Gov­er­nor of Su­cre Gilber­to Pin­to.”

With­in this con­text, dur­ing the broad­cast of his ra­dio pro­gramme “Loy­al­ty is love for Su­cre”, Pin­to em­pha­sised that this ex­port was car­ried out through the mar­itime bridge es­tab­lished be­tween Su­cre and T&T, to ex­pand op­por­tu­ni­ties for eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.

He stressed that the Su­cre re­gion will con­tin­ue to strength­en ex­port ac­tiv­i­ties, with the aim of con­tribut­ing to the progress and eco­nom­ic stim­u­la­tion of the coun­try.

El Ul­ti­mas Noti­cias News­pa­per quot­ed the gen­er­al man­ag­er of the So­cial­ist De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of the State of Su­cre (Cor­po­su­cre), Del­bis Graterol as say­ing that with the load­ing of 3,000 tonnes of bulk salt, Venezuela is over­com­ing the bar­ri­ers of the eco­nom­ic block­ade pro­mot­ed by for­eign coun­tries against Venezuela.

Col­lapse in trade

Over the last five years, there was a sharp de­cline in trade be­tween T&T and Venezuela, ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cial Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment sta­tis­tics.

Ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics from CEN­COEX in 2018, 22 Venezue­lan com­pa­nies ex­port­ed US$25,563,473 worth of prod­ucts to T&T. By 2022, on­ly three Venezue­lan com­pa­nies ex­port­ed US$76,317 worth of prod­ucts to T&T.

To­tal Venezue­lan ex­ports to T&T for the five year pe­ri­od from 2018 to 2022 to­talled US$142, 889, 742.

Some of the ma­jor prod­ucts ex­port­ed from Venezuela to T&T in­clude rub­bers and plas­tics, met­al­lur­gy, ma­chine and equip­ment and pa­per.

T&T’s ex­ports to Venezuela for that five year pe­ri­od showed a sim­i­lar col­lapse.

In 2018, six T&T com­pa­nies ex­port­ed US$246,036 worth of goods to Venezuela.

Four years lat­er, sev­en T&T com­pa­nies ex­port­ed on­ly US$38, 833 worth of goods to Venezuela.

To­tal T&T ex­ports to Venezuela over that five-year pe­ri­od were val­ued at US$1,253,284.

Some of the ma­jor prod­ucts T&T ex­port­ed to Venezuela in­clude food and chem­i­cal prod­ucts.

Trade still small

Econ­o­mist and for­mer head of the Fac­ul­ty of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) St. Au­gus­tine Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les told the Busi­ness Guardian that while he wel­comes greater busi­ness and trade ties be­tween the two neigh­bours, he is not sure that these re­cent ex­ports from Venezuela have re­sult­ed in any sig­nif­i­cant in­creas­es in trade vol­umes as yet.

“I am not sure this salt trade is re­flect­ing a pos­i­tive in­crease in trade be­tween Venezuela (or even the State of Su­cre) and T&T. More da­ta is need­ed to de­ter­mine this. It is how­ev­er a good sign to see salt pro­duc­tion and ex­ports be­ing strength­ened in the state of Su­cre and some ex­ports com­ing this way.

“The trade be­tween Venezuela and T&T de­clined sig­nif­i­cant­ly dur­ing the time of Pres­i­dent Hugo Chávez and is yet to get back to the pre-Chávez lev­el.”

Gon­za­les agreed with da­ta from the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) and the Unit­ed Na­tions Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­i­ca (ECLAC) which show strong eco­nom­ic growth for Venezuela in 2023.

“My im­pres­sion is that the Venezue­lan econ­o­my is slow­ly pick­ing up with oil pro­duc­tion in­creas­ing and more in­vest­ment in oil is tak­ing place.

More and more, Venezuela has found ways to cir­cum­vent the US sanc­tions to in­crease trade and in­vest­ment. Hope­ful­ly if this trend con­tin­ues the econ­o­my would im­prove fur­ther and we should see a less mi­grant out­flow. It should al­so gen­er­al­ly im­ply more trade be­tween Venezuela and T&T.”