Alliances will help Venezuela survive – official
Venezuela will survive because of relationships, says official
SERIOUS ECONOMIC pressure has befallen Venezuela, but that country’s chargé d’affaires at its embassy in St Andrew, Luisa Gutiérrez, says that through alliances with other nations, conditions are gradually improving.
Gutiérrez was speaking with The Gleaner recently on Venezuela’s relationship with Jamaica and its culture.
“I can explain to the Jamaican people that our situation right now, I think that it is better. It is better because we are totally aware of the situation, and we are looking at ways to resolve, plus we are not alone,” she said.
“We have alliances. We are working together with other countries that support Venezuela. India, China, Russia, Belorussia, and South Africa support Venezuela. Some of them (we supply with oil). This topic is very important because, in some cases, we make arrangements with oil. It had become a cliche that Venezuela used to manipulate the oil. Venezuela does not manipulate. Venezuela respects the sovereignty of countries it has oil transactions with.”
She added: “All the countries can decide what they do. In the case of PetroCaribe, one can decide what they do. Normally, other international organisations
put many conditions, but Venezuela, no! We want respect for Venezuela because we respect other countries. Of course we have a boycott, but the Venezuelan government is not alone.”
WORKING ON FINANCIAL FLUENCY
Despite many negative depictions of her country, Gutiérrez said that there is work being done to stop delayed food imports and other destabilising occurrences like settling on a suitable currency to trade its oil.
“Some of the food that Venezuela requires is having problems to arrive. (The food)
comes from different countries – Mexico, and some of it comes from Russia. Our government is working to guarantee the fluency of financial resource. Right now, we are using other references, a basket of other different currencies to trade our oil. Chinese currency is one of the currencies we are using to show what the price of our oil is. The world is diverse. We cannot use (the US currency). We have to use the Chinese currency to establish a reference. Of course it requires some technical agreements, but our government is working (to fix that),” she said.