Raphael John-Lall

For the sec­ond time in 2023, hun­dreds of tourists from T&T vis­it­ed Mar­gari­ta, Venezuela.

Last Thurs­day, there were two flights on Venezue­lan air­line Ru­ta­ca to Mar­gari­ta.

The first flight left at Pi­ar­co at 12pm and car­ried 149 pas­sen­gers.

The sec­ond flight from Pi­ar­co was at 4pm and car­ried 86 pas­sen­gers.

Venezue­lan Am­bas­sador to T&T Ál­varo Sánchez Cordero told the Busi­ness Guardian the fact that tourists from T&T are re­turn­ing to Venezuela as the coun­try’s econ­o­my re­turns to growth shows in­creased bi­lat­er­al co-op­er­a­tion.

“Yes, ab­solute­ly, it is a vir­tu­ous cir­cle. As our econ­o­my im­proves and sta­bilis­es, more peo­ple will once again be in­ter­est­ed in vis­it­ing Venezuela. The same ap­plies to bi­lat­er­al co­op­er­a­tion. The op­por­tu­ni­ties for co­op­er­a­tion be­tween Venezuela and T&T are im­mense. Con­verse­ly, many more op­por­tu­ni­ties will flour­ish as the Venezue­lan econ­o­my sta­bilis­es.”

He al­so boast­ed that Venezuela’s tourism in­dus­try is grow­ing again and he ex­pects more tourists from T&T and oth­er coun­tries to con­tin­ue to vis­it Venezuela.

“I am elat­ed that a sec­ond char­ter flight with T&T tourists was eas­i­ly filled and went to Mar­gari­ta Is­land. Our tourism in­dus­try is tru­ly grow­ing and de­vel­op­ing; hence, in ad­di­tion to our well-struc­tured pro­mo­tion and ad­ver­tise­ment in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, word of mouth has in­deed played a ma­jor role here. I am sure that the T&T tourists who vis­it­ed Mar­gari­ta Is­land in East­er of this year have spo­ken high­ly about their hol­i­days in Venezuela, which in turn has en­ticed new tourists to go and ex­pe­ri­ence Mar­gari­ta.”

New con­nec­tions

The Venezue­lan Vice Min­is­ter of In­ter­na­tion­al Tourism, Leti­cia Gómez re­port­ed last Fri­day that tourists from T&T ar­rived in Mar­gari­ta, as part of the re­ac­ti­va­tion of the char­ter air route that con­nects both coun­tries since April.

In a mes­sage post­ed on her Twit­ter ac­count, Gómez wrote: “The San­ti­a­go Mar­iño In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port re­ceived two flights from the Port-of-Spain-Por­la­mar char­ter op­er­a­tion. This is a com­mer­cial ini­tia­tive, which is part of the strate­gic guide­lines of the Min­istry of Tourism.”

Fi­nance di­rec­tor of Ham­mock Trav­el, Car­ol Salazar which does the trav­el pack­ages told the Busi­ness Guardian that she ex­pects more tourists from T&T to con­tin­ue to vis­it Mar­gari­ta giv­en the is­land’s at­trac­tions in­clud­ing shop­ping, tourism sites, beach­es and Mar­gari­ta’s all-in­clu­sive ho­tels.

Ear­li­er this year, dur­ing the East­er week­end, for the first time in three years, there was a di­rect flight from T&T to Mar­gari­ta on Venezue­lan air­line Ru­ta­ca.

Some 110 tourists from T&T board­ed that flight to Mar­gari­ta in April, which is con­sid­ered one of Venezuela’s top tourist des­ti­na­tions.

As part of grow­ing air con­nec­tiv­i­ty be­tween both coun­tries, last May, Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) al­so opened a route be­tween the Simón Bolí­var Air­port in Mai­quetía and the Pi­ar­co Air­port.

Cari­com wants

sanc­tions lift­ed

The Venezue­lan Am­bas­sador al­so said that the re­cov­ery of Venezuela’s econ­o­my de­pends on the lift­ing of US sanc­tions which have crip­pled Venezuela’s oil in­dus­try and econ­o­my in the past.

“How­ev­er, I will give you an un­der­tak­ing: a great part of our eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery de­pends on the lift­ing of the US block­ade against Venezuela. Just to give you an ex­am­ple, the UN Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on the Neg­a­tive Im­pact of Uni­lat­er­al Co­er­cive Mea­sures on the En­joy­ment of Hu­man Rights, Dr Ale­na Douhan, vis­it­ed Venezuela and is­sued a re­port, where she ex­plained that sanc­tions have had a dev­as­tat­ing ef­fect on the en­tire pop­u­la­tion, es­pe­cial­ly those liv­ing in pover­ty, women, chil­dren, the el­der­ly, peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties or with life-threat­en­ing or chron­ic dis­eases, and the in­dige­nous pop­u­la­tion. No stra­ta of so­ci­ety has been un­touched.”

The Venezuela’s Am­bas­sador’s state­ments echo a Cari­com state­ment is­sued in ear­ly June and post­ed on its web­site ask­ing the Unit­ed States to lift sanc­tions against Venezuela which is ham­per­ing the cross-bor­der gas ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween T&T and Venezuela.

“With­in the con­text of the bi­lat­er­al re­la­tion­ship with the Unit­ed States, Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment urged for the re­moval of sanc­tions on Venezuela to al­low coun­tries in the re­gion to ben­e­fit from the Petro­Caribe ini­tia­tive and for progress on the ex­ploita­tion of cross-bor­der nat­ur­al gas fields be­tween T&T and Venezuela. The lead­ers al­so re­it­er­at­ed Cari­com’s con­sis­tent call for the re­moval of sanc­tions against Cu­ba,” Cari­com’s state­ment said.

In Jan­u­ary, the US gov­ern­ment, through its Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol, grant­ed a li­cence to T&T to de­vel­op the Drag­on nat­ur­al gas field lo­cat­ed in Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters.

The li­cence, which is for two years, au­tho­ris­es com­pa­nies from Trinidad to do busi­ness with US-sanc­tioned state oil firm PDVSA, but stip­u­late that cash must not be paid for the nat­ur­al gas.

The li­cence was is­sued by the US gov­ern­ment af­ter months of lob­by­ing by En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Venezuela found re­serves es­ti­mat­ed at 4.2 tril­lion cu­bic feet (TCF) in Drag­on side of its mar­itime bor­der with Trinidad.

T&T is in­ter­est­ed in ex­ploit­ing the Drag­on gas field be­cause the coun­try is not pro­duc­ing enough nat­ur­al gas to sat­is­fy ful­ly the de­mand of the petro­chem­i­cal plants on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate and the liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas fa­cil­i­ty in Point Fortin.