Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and his visiting Colombian counterpart Juan Manuel Santos subscribed Monday a trade understanding covering 3.500 items, based on the most exchanged products in recent years, and agreed on an ambitious energy projects that include neighbouring Ecuador and Panama.
Santos and Chavez celebrate the new relations (Photo AP)
“I am very pleased with the signing of these agreements, which I’m convinced will bring great benefits to the peoples of Venezuela and Colombia; that’s what integration is about” said the Colombian leader.
The new understanding replaces the previous bilateral trade framework which existed as part of the Andean Community of Nations, CAN, a regional integration mechanism which Venezuela abandoned last April.
Santos said that the agreement “which still is limited includes almost 3.500 tariffs involved in the creation of the strong bilateral trade of recent years which at its peak reached over 7 billion dollars.
“The understanding has the same objectives that the trade treaty agreed twenty years ago and is geared to eliminate tariffs and other non tariff barriers” of produce that can be expected to keep increasing the value and volume of bilateral trade.
President Chavez recalled that bilateral trade in 2008 reached over seven billion dollars and “our potentials are even greater”.
Read full article…
