Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez hiked an oil windfall tax in a move that raises government income ahead of the 2012 presidential election, but puts a heavy load on oil companies.
Venezuela formally exited the Andean Community of Nations, CAN, Friday when it stopped belonging to the free trade zone which for 38 years eliminated a full range of tariffs among its members (Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Colombia), announced the Venezuelan Foreign Affairs ministry.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez agreed over the weekend to temporarily extend the bilateral trade pact within the framework of the Andean Community, or CAN, despite Venezuela’s pending withdrawal from that regional organization on April 21.
Uruguayan president Jose Mujica strongly supported the incorporation of Venezuela as full member of Mercosur from a Sunday column published in one of Brazil’s most influential newspapers, Folha de Sao Paulo.
Blackouts blamed on forest fires left without power whole areas of north and central Venezuela, including Caracas, officials said. The power outages began last Thursday due to the collapse of electrical lines located 250 kilometres west of Caracas, Electricity Minister Ali Rodriguez said.
The presidents of Colombia, Venezuela Juan Manuel Santos and Hugo Chavez held a non announced meeting with their Honduran peer Pofirio Lobo and said they were committed to help the outcast country rejoin the Latin American family by returning to the Organization of American States, OAS.
The potential full membership of Venezuela in Mercosur, before formalizing its departure from the Andean Community (CAN) has Venezuelan entrepreneurs and several parties linked to integration awaiting and in uncertainty since they are not in touch with government actions on the issue.
Uruguayan president Jose Mujica promised his peer Hugo Chavez he would press strongly for Venezuela’s incorporation as full member of Mercosur because this will help balance the group.
President Hugo Chavez confirmed he would run for re-election in 2012 and made a strong call for regional unity warning that “if capitalism returns to Venezuela” it would mark the end of oil cooperation.
Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez said on Wednesday during a press conference in Montevideo that the Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi “is doing what has to be done, resisting an imperial aggression” and added that “it’s not anticipated that he has plans to leave Libya”.