An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Venezuela is pro­ject­ing US$75.6 bil­lion in in­vest­ment over the next five years fol­low­ing the sign­ing of 80 en­er­gy agree­ments, as it seeks to at­tract for­eign cap­i­tal and ex­pand eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty be­yond its oil in­dus­try.

Venezue­lan Am­bas­sador to T&T, Al­varo Sanchez Cordero, out­lined the in­vest­ment out­look dur­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion’s (TTMA) Do­ing Busi­ness in Venezuela we­bi­nar yes­ter­day, urg­ing lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers and busi­ness­es to ex­plore op­por­tu­ni­ties in the neigh­bour­ing coun­try.

The pro­ject­ed in­vest­ment, cov­er­ing 2026 to 2031, rep­re­sents an av­er­age of ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$12 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly. Sanchez Cordero de­scribed the ex­pect­ed in­flows as an im­por­tant source of eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, with po­ten­tial ben­e­fits ex­tend­ing in­to oth­er sec­tors.

He al­so point­ed to Venezuela's re­port­ed eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery, claim­ing the coun­try had record­ed 22 con­sec­u­tive quar­ters of growth, equiv­a­lent to near­ly sev­en years of ex­pan­sion.

The am­bas­sador not­ed that ECLAC has pro­ject­ed that Venezuela's econ­o­my will grow by 6.5 per cent by the end of 2026, while fig­ures from the Venezue­lan cen­tral bank, re­leased on Wednes­day, put third-quar­ter growth at 7.4 per cent. He point­ed out that non-en­er­gy ac­tiv­i­ty was al­so ex­pand­ing, with the cen­tral bank re­port­ing growth of 6.28 per cent in that sec­tor.

The strongest gains were record­ed in con­struc­tion, which ex­pand­ed by 35.7 per cent, fol­lowed by fi­nance and in­sur­ance at 29.3 per cent. Tourism grew by 8.9 per cent, agri­cul­ture by 7.13 per cent and man­u­fac­tur­ing by 4.32 per cent. Over­all pri­vate-sec­tor ac­tiv­i­ty in­creased by 8 per cent.

Sanchez Cordero ar­gued that the fig­ures re­flect­ed a broad­er re­cov­ery be­yond the coun­try's tra­di­tion­al de­pen­dence on oil. He al­so point­ed to im­prove­ments in do­mes­tic food pro­duc­tion, claim­ing Venezuela was now pro­duc­ing more than 90 per cent of its food re­quire­ments.

In the en­er­gy sec­tor, oil ac­tiv­i­ty grew by 8.5 per cent in 2026, while 80 agree­ments had been signed to sup­port in­vest­ment and de­vel­op­ment.

He en­cour­aged T&T busi­ness­es to look be­yond the en­er­gy in­dus­try and con­sid­er op­por­tu­ni­ties in oth­er ar­eas of the Venezue­lan econ­o­my, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the an­tic­i­pat­ed in­vest­ment flows cre­ate de­mand for goods, ser­vices and sup­port­ing in­dus­tries.

The am­bas­sador al­so point­ed to a re­cent vis­it by a del­e­ga­tion from Venezuela's Su­cre state to T&T, de­scrib­ing it as a suc­cess­ful ex­am­ple of ef­forts to strength­en com­mer­cial links, co­op­er­a­tion and in­vest­ment be­tween the two coun­tries.

The del­e­ga­tion's en­gage­ment was in­tend­ed to po­si­tion Su­cre to ben­e­fit from in­creased eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and de­vel­op part­ner­ships with T&T busi­ness­es.

Al­so ad­dress­ing the we­bi­nar was Dayne Marc Chin Slick, Chargé d'Af­faires at T&T's Em­bassy in Cara­cas, who out­lined the Gov­ern­ment's ap­proach to strength­en­ing bi­lat­er­al com­mer­cial re­la­tions.

He iden­ti­fied the up­dat­ing of ex­ist­ing mem­o­ran­da of un­der­stand­ing and oth­er bi­lat­er­al agree­ments dur­ing 2026 and 2027 as a pri­or­i­ty, along­side iden­ti­fy­ing im­me­di­ate ar­eas for co­op­er­a­tion through re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al arrange­ments.

Chin Slick al­so stressed the im­por­tance of sus­tained en­gage­ment be­tween pri­vate-sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tions in both coun­tries, in­clud­ing gov­ern­ment-linked en­ti­ties, to iden­ti­fy com­mer­cial op­por­tu­ni­ties, gath­er feed­back and ad­dress ob­sta­cles to trade.

He point­ed to the TTMA we­bi­nar and the re­cent Su­cre del­e­ga­tion vis­it as ex­am­ples of ef­forts to bring busi­ness­es to­geth­er and fa­cil­i­tate di­rect di­a­logue.