Raphael John-Lall

The ex­port of con­struc­tion raw ma­te­ri­als to T&T adds to the re­vived com­mer­cial re­la­tion­ship be­tween T&T and Venezuela, a coun­try that has been bat­tered by US sanc­tions over the last ten years and which has lost al­most 80 per cent of the size of its econ­o­my in that pe­ri­od.

The Busi­ness Guardian reached out the Venezue­lan Em­bassy in T&T which con­firmed that two weeks ago, 8,000 tonnes of ag­gre­gate ma­te­r­i­al (stones) left the Port of Cumaná in east­ern Venezuela for the first time for T&T. How­ev­er, the em­bassy said it could not give more de­tails of the ex­port trans­ac­tion at this time.

Ag­gre­gates are usu­al­ly used in the con­struc­tion in­dus­try to pro­vide drainage, fill voids, pro­tect pipes and to pro­vide hard sur­faces. They are al­so used in wa­ter fil­tra­tion and sewage treat­ment process­es.

“We have had the first ex­port of ag­gre­gate, an his­toric ex­port to the sis­ter Re­pub­lic of T&T, which rep­re­sents an ex­po­nen­tial leap to­wards the de­vel­op­ment of this re­gion and Venezuela,” Venezue­lan News­pa­per El Ul­ti­mas Noti­cias quot­ed the Gov­er­nor of the Venezue­lan state of Su­cre, Gilber­to Pin­to, as say­ing.

Speak­ing at the Venezue­lan In­de­pen­dence Day cer­e­mo­ny in ear­ly Ju­ly, Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon said T&T’s Gov­ern­ment wants stronger busi­ness and trade ties be­tween the two coun­tries.

Caribbean Air­lines re­sumed reg­u­lar flights to Cara­cas on May 13 and tourists from T&T have start­ed once again to vis­it and spend mon­ey at pop­u­lar Venezue­lan des­ti­na­tions.

Con­cern­ing en­er­gy ne­go­ti­a­tions, at the end of Ju­ly, it was re­port­ed in the lo­cal me­dia that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said that the talks over the cross-bor­der gas re­serves that both coun­tries share are alive how­ev­er there are hur­dles as the Venezue­lans have not ac­cept­ed some of the terms laid down by the Amer­i­cans.

More trade need­ed

Econ­o­mist and for­mer di­rec­tor of the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les told the Busi­ness Guardian that while he wel­comes greater busi­ness and trade ties be­tween the two neigh­bours, he was not sure that there is enough eco­nom­ic growth in Venezuela that would keep Venezue­lans from mi­grat­ing to oth­er coun­tries.

Ac­cord­ing to the Venezue­lan page of the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF), the coun­try’s econ­o­my will grow by 5 per cent in 2023, one of the high­est growth rates in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic in 2021, Gon­za­les had giv­en sev­er­al pre­sen­ta­tions at UWI on Venezuela’s econ­o­my and Venezue­lan mi­grants.

Two weeks ago, at least 98 Venezue­lans were de­port­ed by T&T’s au­thor­i­ties.

“I am not sure how much of an im­pact this ac­tiv­i­ty will have on the Venezue­lan econ­o­my and mit­i­gat­ing the mi­grant flow. I need to get a bet­ter pic­ture of the over­all health of the econ­o­my. Gen­er­al­ly, if oil pro­duc­tion and ex­ports in­crease sig­nif­i­cant­ly, we know that that will have a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on the econ­o­my and should di­min­ish the out­flow of mi­grants but I am not clear where these fig­ures are cur­rent­ly. I be­lieve the last fig­ure I saw for oil pro­duc­tion was around 700,000 bar­rels per day (bpd) which was up from the low of around 450,000 bpd some years ago,” he said.

Gon­za­les al­so said while the so­cio-eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion has im­proved in Venezuela, his im­pres­sion is that in­vest­ment in oil pro­duc­tion is still way be­low its de­sired lev­el to bring pro­duc­tion to over 1 mil­lion bpd.

“There has been some im­prove­ment in the Venezue­lan econ­o­my which would have caused some mi­grants to re­turn and few­er to come out dai­ly, but lot more eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty is need­ed to curb the flow and en­cour­age more to re­turn. US sanc­tions, in spite of the few con­ces­sions, are still af­fect­ing oil in­vest­ment in Venezuela as the US is putting pres­sure on Maduro to make con­ces­sions for the next elec­tions.”

Venezue­lan trade

T&T’s im­ports from Venezuela were US$5.72 mil­lion dur­ing 2021, ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions COM­TRADE data­base on in­ter­na­tion­al trade.

The web­site, the Ob­ser­va­to­ry of Eco­nom­ic Com­plex­i­ty (OEC) con­firmed this da­ta adding that in 2021, Venezuela ex­port­ed just over US$5 mil­lion to T&T and the main prod­ucts that Venezuela ex­port­ed to T&T were iron ore ($2.9 mil­lion), Tis­sue ($580,000), and Iron Wire ($569,000).

The OEC fur­ther states that dur­ing the last 26 years the ex­ports of Venezuela to T&T have de­creased at an an­nu­alised rate of 10.8 per­cent, from $97.2 mil­lion in 1995 to $5 mil­lion in 2021.

In 2021, T&T ex­port­ed $1.59 mil­lion to Venezuela. The main prod­ucts ex­port­ed from T&T to Venezuela were oth­er ed­i­ble prepa­ra­tions ($498,000), re­fined pe­tro­le­um ($339,000), and poul­try meat ($96,200).

Dur­ing the last 26 years the ex­ports of T&T to Venezuela have de­creased at an an­nu­al­ized rate of 10.7 per­cent, from $29.9 mil­lion in 1995 to $1.59 mil­lion in 2021.