
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.

Venezuela and Argentina recorded the highest rates of inflation in South America during the first quarter of 2011 according to the latest data available.

Venezuela in Mercosur will act as a balancing element and Unasur has more than proven its merits, said Paraguay’s new Foreign Affairs minister Jorge Lara Castro who insisted the country must work urgently to overcome asymmetries in the region and passive integration is not enough.

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.

Venezuela's nationwide consumer price index (NCPI), prepared by the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) and the National Statistics Institute (INE), showed a 1.4% increase in March 2011 compared to February 2011.

Venezuela will send Argentina 12 million barrels of diesel and fuel oil starting in May, an official from Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA said.