Several changes are registered on this end of the year relations between Argentina and Venezuelaafter the gradual approach from the government of Alberto Fernández to the regime of Niccolo Maduro after Kirchnerism returned to power three years ago.
The most sensational changes have to do with the fact that at the beginning of 2023 Buenos Aires-Caracas flights will be restored; another with which a increase in bilateral trade up to 60% and with the fact that talks have already started with Brazil so that Venezuela returns to Mercosur, from where she was suspended in 2016 for her submission to the democratic system, contrary to the protocols of the blockade.
The Argentine ambassador in Caracas, Oscar Laborde, traveled to Buenos Aires to spend the end of the year and define the details of the movements expected in the coming weeks. Laborde was sent to Venezuela to rebuild ties, bearing in mind that between 2015, with the government of Mauricio Macri, and until the middle of this year, diplomatic relations remained at the level of charge d’affaires.
Besides, Maduro is, together with the Cuban Miguel Díaz Canel, and the Nicaraguan Daniel Ortega, one of the 32 heads of state and government invited to the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) Summit, which the Argentine government is organizing for January 24 in Buenos Aires. After all, his ministers had already been there last October during the summit of foreign ministers that Santiago Cafiero led in Buenos Aires, and which here also joined the ministers of the European Union.
The summit of 24 January It will be the first photo that Fernández will have bilaterally with Madurowho wants to come because also the brazilian Luiz Inácio Lula da Silvawho will take office as president of Brazil on January 1, has already announced the resumption of diplomatic relations with Venezuela, interrupted by the administration of the outgoing government Jair Bolsonaro.
And it was Lula who whitewashed the talks so that the suspension that weighs on Venezuela as full member of Mercosur is revoked. It is in fact a more laborious issue because its exit from the meetings in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay was just as premature, as was its incorporation with a stick by the then governments of Cristina Kirchner Y Dilma Rousseff without the Venezuelans respecting the previous steps to enter the bloc and without analyzing the true complementarity with the Southern Common Market, of a country with a different structure and another geopolitics located in the Caribbean.
The The relationship between Maduro and the Fernández administration has its zigzags. To begin with, the Venezuelan is actually a friend and ally of Cristina Kirchner, and both he and the regime’s leadership have had even insults to the Argentine presidentespecially during this year’s crisis because the Argentine judicial system detained the Emtrasur plane in Ezeiza – they even called it a “puppet” of the empire, from the US – and the crew of 14 Venezuelans and five Iranians who are already been released.
A key point is the return of direct flights to improve air connectivity. Argentine airlines stopped working in August 2017. Venezuelan state-owned Conviasa had resumed its flights in early 2022, but after the abduction of the emtrasur plan in Argentina it decided to suspend them indefinitely. Progress would soon be made with the assignment of the sections to an Argentine private company and to a Venezuelan private companywhich would have the authorization to operate until Aerolíneas Argentinas and Conviasa resume operations on the Buenos Aires-Caracas route.
If the trade balance with Venezuela has reached during the government of Néstor and Cristina Kirchner al 2 billion dollarsoil-based and a trust that has given rise to investigations in the courts for alleged acts of corruption through the so-called “parallel embassy” managed by the Ministry of Planning, then it fell to levels close to zero. Now, the revamped Venezuelan-Argentine Chamber of Commerce (Cavernarg) estimates that both countries will be able to close this year with trades of about 300 million dollars.
“In the new turn of political and economic relations taking place between Venezuela and Argentina, they will put the private sector to play a central role,” promised Laborde, who is now trying to focus on an economic agenda with the regime which in turn undertook a dialogue with the United States, another with Europeand a reform of a more centralized economy a more liberal opening.
Laborde has already organized several trade missions in Caracas where companies such as Rizobacter, Tedeschi, Chemtec, Hersems and Bernardín have participated, involved in investment projects with Argentine capital and in a strategic alliance with Venezuelan private companies for the development of agricultural production, with transfer of knowledge, contributions of cutting-edge technology and updating of the machinery for production from Argentina.
The companies Biogénesis Bagó, La Lechera Santa Clara and the pig farmer ISOWEAN SA participated in the second edition, focusing on the development of pigs in the Venezuelan territory. For the production of an exponential-scale swine industry, inputs and vaccines will be needed which would be exported from Argentina under a technology transfer program that would culminate in Venezuela’s status change to a canker-and-mouth disease-free country. mouth with vaccination.
Then there is another program known as “Venezuelan and Argentine Brotherhood for Manufacturing”, for which a delegation of Venezuelan companies has traveled led by the Venezuelan-Argentine Chamber of Commerce, chaired by entrepreneur Benjamín Tripier, focused on the sectors of food, medicine, laboratories, technology, coffee, the financial market and the stock exchange, among others.
Source: Clarin
