Guardian Me­dia’s free­lance busi­ness re­porter, Raphael John-Lall, vis­it­ed Venezuela last week as part of a group of jour­nal­ists from 50 coun­tries who were in­vit­ed by Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment. The jour­nal­ists toured key non-en­er­gy busi­ness­es and par­tic­i­pat­ed in work­shops and dis­cus­sions about so­cial and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ments not on­ly in Venezuela but the Glob­al South..

The group stayed in the Las Mer­cedes re­gion of Cara­cas, which is de­scribed there as Venezuela’s Man­hat­tan. Busi­ness seems to be boom­ing in Las Mer­cedes with new malls, stores and car deal­er­ships.

“Cara­cas looks clean and sta­ble. Much work is be­ing done to give Cara­cas a facelift, in­clud­ing the un­der­ground sub­way, which is well or­gan­ised and cheap. Salaries are still low as the econ­o­my is small­er than it was 10 years ago. The next step would be con­tin­u­ing to grow the econ­o­my so Venezue­lans can stay at home with­out need­ing to go to Trinidad or Brazil or Colom­bia or Mi­a­mi,” said John-Lall.

Venezuela’s eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery will not on­ly ben­e­fit its cit­i­zens but T&T and the rest of the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca.

That is the view of econ­o­mist and for­mer head of the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les who spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian about a se­ries of work­shops held in Venezuela last week.

Ac­cord­ing to the Of­fice of In­ter­na­tion­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tion of Venezuela’s Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs, the press tour aimed to cre­ate and ar­tic­u­late a mul­ti­po­lar world where the me­dia from de­vel­op­ing coun­tries can tell their own sto­ries.

Venezuela’s eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion thrust comes as US oil com­pa­ny Chevron is set to restart crude ship­ments from its joint ven­tures in Venezuela un­der a re­newed US Trea­sury sanc­tions waiv­er, CEO Mike Wirth con­firmed last Fri­day.

Wirth stat­ed that a “lim­it­ed amount of oil” would be flow­ing to US re­finer­ies once more in Au­gust.

The oil ex­ec­u­tive added that the restart of oil drilling and ex­port op­er­a­tions in Venezuela would have a lim­it­ed short-term im­pact on Chevron’s prof­its but would help the firm be­gin re­coup­ing debts.

Gon­za­les said the re­turn of Chevron to Venezuela sig­nals a change in US pol­i­cy to the Nicolás Maduro gov­ern­ment and in the fu­ture, it may even fa­cil­i­tate the grant­i­ng of Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) li­cences for T&T to ex­ploit Drag­on and Cocuina gas fields.

“This would en­hance nat­ur­al gas sup­ply in T&T and sup­port more down­stream petro­chem­i­cal pro­duc­tion. Chevron’s re­turn al­so im­plies that oth­er Eu­ro­pean com­pa­nies would be al­lowed to re-en­ter Venezuela, so for­eign in­vest­ment in oil and gas pro­duc­tion would get a boost which would ex­pand growth and em­ploy­ment in Venezuela”

Gon­za­les said stronger eco­nom­ic growth in Venezuela would mean more sta­bil­i­ty and few­er Venezue­lans leav­ing the coun­try for green­er pas­tures else­where.

“Un­der these con­di­tions, mi­gra­tion from Venezuela would de­cline. T&T there­fore could ex­pect less mi­grants in this sce­nario. Busi­ness with Venezuela should al­so in­crease as there would be more im­port de­mand for goods and ser­vices from T&T. On the whole, the T&T Gov­ern­ment would seek to en­hance its re­la­tions with Cara­cas and that should favour greater trav­el and in­vest­ment be­tween both coun­tries.”

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta from Venezuela’s Cen­tral Bank, the econ­o­my grew by 7.7 per cent in the first half of 2025 and the Gov­ern­ment projects a 9 per cent Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) growth rate by the end of 2025.

Two weeks ago, the Busi­ness Guardian re­port­ed that over 12,000 T&T na­tion­als have vis­it­ed Mar­gari­ta in the last two years and there are plans to have lo­cals vis­it Cara­cas for shop­ping and en­ter­tain­ment as was pop­u­lar in the 1980s and 1990s.

Di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion

High­light­ing a tran­si­tion from over-re­liance on oil rev­enues and a move to­wards de­vel­op­ing new sec­tors, Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties car­ried the in­ter­na­tion­al jour­nal­ists on tours of dif­fer­ent in­dus­tri­al and man­u­fac­tur­ing plants dur­ing the course of the vis­it.

Venezuela now pro­duces over 90 per cent of its own food and 70 per cent of its own med­i­cine and drugs, ac­cord­ing to Gov­ern­ment sta­tis­tics.

Even the Yu­tong bus­es that trans­port­ed the in­ter­na­tion­al jour­nal­ists are man­u­fac­tured in Venezuela in a joint part­ner­ship with Chi­na. And the Dongfeng am­bu­lances that ac­com­pa­nied the bus­es dur­ing the tour are al­so as­sem­bled in Venezuela in a joint ven­ture with Chi­na.

The im­por­tance of lo­cal in­dus­try and pro­duc­tion was high­light­ed when vis­it­ing in­ter­na­tion­al jour­nal­ists toured the state-owned Café Madrid Cof­fee plant in the state of Carabobo in Venezuela.

Venezuela’s cof­fee pro­duc­tion is now at a lev­el where it sat­is­fies do­mes­tic de­mand and Venezuela is now ex­port­ing cof­fee to for­eign coun­tries, ac­cord­ing to Venezue­lan of­fi­cials who ac­com­pa­nied the jour­nal­ists.

Cof­fee beans are sourced from var­i­ous cof­fee grow­ers, who have plan­ta­tions in the moun­tain­ous re­gions of Venezuela. These cof­fee plan­ta­tions are at an al­ti­tude of more than 1,000 me­ters above sea lev­el, and this, ac­cord­ing to the cof­fee grow­ers, al­lows for the de­vel­op­ment of beans with in­tense flavours and aro­mas.

Fol­low­ing a rig­or­ous process, the beans get in­to the Café Madrid plant, where they go through the var­i­ous stages of pro­duc­tion, re­sult­ing in the fi­nal prod­uct.

The plant has a ca­pac­i­ty to store 400,000 kilo­grammes of cof­fee beans.

The next step is the roast­ing process, one of the most im­por­tant in pro­duc­ing qual­i­ty cof­fee.

The Café Madrid cof­fee brand has es­tab­lished a strong po­si­tion in the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket, be­ing ex­port­ed to sev­er­al coun­tries. That is why qual­i­ty con­trol and pack­ag­ing are fun­da­men­tal steps of the process.

Work­ers at the cof­fee proces­sor are on three 8-hour shifts, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty here is op­ti­mum.

More than 58,000 cof­fee grow­ers cul­ti­vate cof­fee beans in 21 of Venezuela’s 23 states.

In­ter­na­tion­al jour­nal­ists were al­so giv­en a tour of one of Venezuela’s ma­jor rum pro­duc­ers. San­ta Tere­sa 1796 is a Venezue­lan rum pro­duced at the Ha­cien­da San­ta Tere­sa in the Aragua Val­ley, found­ed in 1796. This can be de­scribed as Venezuela’s equiv­a­lent of T&T’s An­gos­tu­ra based in Laven­tille.

Here, Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties showed how al­co­hol is pro­duced and then ex­port­ed glob­al­ly.

Of­fi­cial fig­ures re­veal that in the first four months of 2025 alone, Venezuela’s non-oil ex­ports in­creased by 87.66 per cent com­pared to the same pe­ri­od last year. Among the most no­table prod­ucts is rum, with more than two mil­lion cas­es ex­port­ed to over 100 coun­tries, rep­re­sent­ing 3 per cent of the coun­try’s GDP.

Com­ment­ing on Venezuela’s at­tempts to move away from its over re­liance on oil, Gon­za­les said that this will mean more busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties for T&T.

Tar­iffs

Last Thurs­day, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump set a 15 per cent tar­iff on im­ports from T&T un­der a new ex­ec­u­tive or­der ti­tled “Fur­ther Mod­i­fy­ing the Rec­i­p­ro­cal Tar­iff Rates.”

Guyana and Venezuela al­so face a 15 per cent tar­iff. The an­nounce­ment by the US was part of a sweep­ing up­date to the U.S. tar­iff sched­ule af­fect­ing 69 trad­ing part­ners world­wide.

When asked if these tar­iffs show that T&T and the rest of the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca are now ex­pe­ri­enc­ing what Venezuela has sur­vived for many years, Gon­za­les said tar­iffs and sanc­tions are two dif­fer­ent things.

“Venezuela suf­fers from US sanc­tions that seek to re­strict rev­enue to PDVSA and the Maduro Gov­ern­ment. These sanc­tions im­pact neg­a­tive­ly on for­eign in­vest­ment go­ing to Venezuela as well as ex­ports from Venezuela, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the en­er­gy sec­tor. The im­po­si­tion of tar­iffs is dif­fer­ent. In one way or an­oth­er, the US is rais­ing tar­iffs on all its trad­ing part­ners mak­ing it more dif­fi­cult for them to ex­port to the US. At the same time, the US is try­ing to low­er tar­iffs and oth­er trade bar­ri­ers to its ex­ports to these coun­tries. Venezuela is al­so like T&T, part of these high­er tar­iffs by the U.S.”