Rapheal John-Lall

Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicholas Maduro's trip to T&T two weeks ago fol­lowed the vis­its of Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping and US Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden to T&T in May.

En­er­gy, trans­porta­tion, se­cu­ri­ty and build­ing bridges with South Amer­i­ca's Mer­co­sur trade bloc were some of the main is­sues on the agen­da when Maduro vis­it­ed T&T on the fi­nal day of the three-day meet­ing of the 34th meet­ing of Cari­com heads of gov­ern­ment in Port-of-Spain on Ju­ly 6. This is not the first time that Venezuela and its Eng­lish-speak­ing Cari­com neigh­bours have met to deep­en trade and oth­er eco­nom­ic-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties.

In Oc­to­ber 1992, the Cari­com/Venezuela agree­ment on trade and in­vest­ment was signed and came in­to force on Jan­u­ary 1, 1993. It al­lowed some Cari­com prod­ucts im­me­di­ate du­ty-free ac­cess to the Venezuela mar­ket, and ad­di­tion­al prod­ucts on a phased ba­sis. Al­ready, steps have been tak­en by Venezuela and T&T to fol­low up on dis­cus­sions that be­gan at the Cari­com heads of gov­ern­ment meet­ing.

Trans­port

Fol­low­ing Maduro's vis­it, a del­e­ga­tion from the Venezue­lan Min­istry of Trans­port vis­it­ed T&T last week to deep­en co-op­er­a­tion in the area of trans­porta­tion. A state­ment from the Venezue­lan Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain on Mon­day said this is part of the "re­launch­ing of the his­tor­i­cal re­la­tion­ship" be­tween the two coun­tries.

"Last week, on­ly four days af­ter the vis­it of Maduro to T&T, an im­por­tant del­e­ga­tion from the Min­istry of Wa­ter and Air Trans­port had meet­ings with T&T's Min­is­ter of Tourism Stephen Cadiz and Min­is­ter of Trade Vas­ant Bharath, as well as a meet­ing with Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (Nid­co)," the state­ment said.

Dis­cus­sions were al­so held with re­gard to es­tab­lish­ing a time­frame for new wa­ter-taxi routes as well as Venezue­lan state-owned air­line Con­vi­asa es­tab­lish­ing new routes to T&T.

Ac­cord­ing to the state­ment from the em­bassy, the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment has pro­posed to of­fer T&T, the ser­vices of Ven­eve­ga, a state-owned ship­ping com­pa­ny to help move goods with­in the re­gion.

"The re­la­tion­ship seeks to make progress in the con­sol­i­da­tion of the ties that bind two neigh­bour­ing peo­ples de­spite lan­guage bar­ri­er. It starts a stage of re­al co-op­er­a­tion be­tween the two coun­tries."

In T&T, Maduro had said Venezuela will ex­pand its fleet of fer­ries to reach the Venezue­lan is­land of Mar­gari­ta, which would even­tu­al­ly be ex­tend­ed to oth­er Cari­com ter­ri­to­ries.

En­er­gy

In her meet­ing with Maduro, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said rep­re­sen­ta­tives of T&T will be­gin talks on Ju­ly 23 with the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment on en­er­gy mat­ters, es­pe­cial­ly on re­solv­ing the long out­stand­ing is­sue of the Lo­ran Man­a­tee field, which both coun­tries share.

Sev­en tril­lion cu­bic feet (TCF) is be­lieved to be on Venezuela's side, while three TCF is on T&T's side of the shared bor­der.

"We agreed for a meet­ing to be con­vened in T&T with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Venezuela on or about Ju­ly 23. I am ad­vised there is about ten TCF of re­cov­er­able gas in Block A of the Lo­ran Man­a­tee field," she said.

In 1990, both na­tions signed a De­lim­i­ta­tion Treaty, which sets out the terms on how to ex­ploit hy­dro­car­bon re­serves on both sides of the bor­der. In 2003 the two coun­tries signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing on the pro­ce­dure for the uni­fi­ca­tion of hy­dro­car­bon de­posits.

Ac­cord­ing to BP's An­nu­al Sta­tis­ti­cal Re­view of World En­er­gy in June 2012, Venezuela's de­posits were at 296.5 bil­lion bar­rels, mak­ing it the coun­try with the world's largest proven oil re­serves. It pushed Sau­di Ara­bia in­to sec­ond place, which now holds 265.4 bil­lion bar­rels.

Mer­co­sur and Una­sur

Last Fri­day, Venezuela as­sumed the ro­tat­ing pres­i­den­cy of the South Amer­i­can Com­mon Mar­ket (Mer­co­sur), which it will hold for the next six months.

This trade bloc, found­ed in 1991, is made up of Brazil, Ar­genti­na, Uruguay Paraguay and Venezuela. Mer­co­sur has five as­so­ciate mem­bers–Chile, Bo­livia, Colom­bia, Ecuador and Pe­ru–that do not en­joy full vot­ing rights or com­plete ac­cess to the mar­kets of Mer­co­sur's full mem­bers. They re­ceive tar­iff re­duc­tions, but are not re­quired to im­pose the com­mon ex­ter­nal tar­iff that ap­plies to full Mer­co­sur mem­bers.

The pop­u­la­tion of Mer­co­sur's full mem­ber­ship to­talled more than 260 mil­lion peo­ple in 2011, in­clud­ing Venezuela. It has a col­lec­tive gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) of US$2.9 tril­lion and is the world's fourth largest trad­ing bloc af­ter the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU), North Amer­i­can Free Trade Agree­ment (NAF­TA), and the As­so­ci­a­tion of South East Asian Na­tions (ASEAN).

In T&T, Maduro pro­posed to pro­mote a plan to de­vel­op ex­changes be­tween the na­tions of Cari­com and Mer­co­sur.

He said this ex­change of both eco­nom­ic blocs would strength­en re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment bloc of all the coun­tries in­volved.

Maduro said: "Fur­ther ad­vance work and eco­nom­ic joint de­vel­op­ment in Cari­com and Mer­co­sur and move to­wards a con­sol­i­dat­ed de­vel­op­ment zone of our coun­try, that the Caribbean has this huge mar­ket is Brazil, Ar­genti­na, Venezuela , Uruguay. For the Caribbean have in­vest­ment and tech­no­log­i­cal de­vel­op­ment that emerges of broth­ers."

Apart from Mer­co­sur, Maduro al­so in­vit­ed T&T to be "in­cor­po­rat­ed" in­to Union of South Amer­i­can Na­tions (Una­sur) be­cause of its ge­o­graph­i­cal prox­im­i­ty to the South Amer­i­can main­land.

Una­sur con­sists of all the coun­tries on the South Amer­i­can con­ti­nent.

Eng­lish speak­ing Guyana, which is sit­u­at­ed on the South Amer­i­can main­land next to Brazil and Venezuela is a mem­ber of Cari­com and al­so a mem­ber of Una­sur.

"The 21st cen­tu­ry is the cen­tu­ry of de­vel­op­ment for the peo­ple of the Caribbean," Maduro said.

Counter nar­cotics

Dur­ing his vis­it, Maduro pro­posed a re­gion­al plan to deal with the drug trade.

"We want to build a joint Caribbean se­cu­ri­ty plan. We are vic­tims of in­ter­na­tion­al crime, drug traf­fick­ing, pri­mar­i­ly. Nei­ther of our coun­tries is a pro­duc­er or con­sumer of drugs, yet we are vic­tims of those who pro­duce the drugs," he said.

He said Venezuela shares a long bor­der with Colom­bia and con­tin­ues to work hard to en­sure drugs do not cross the bor­ders the two coun­tries share.

Venezuela's For­eign Min­is­ter Elias Jaua, who ac­com­pa­nied Maduro on his vis­it to T&T, said Venezuela's new Min­is­ter of De­fence Car­men Me­len­dez will vis­it T&T to dis­cuss se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures.