Cuban Foreign Trade Minister Antonio Carricarte attending the Fourth ExpoCuba in Caracas

Prensa Latina/News Service: Trade between Cuba and Venezuela has grown to fold over the past ten years, and transactions might amount to three billion dollars by this year's end, according to ministerial sources. In statements to Prensa Latina, Cuban First Deputy Foreign Trade Minister Antonio Carricarte recalled that bilateral trade amounted to one billion dollars in 2000 and increased to 2.7 billion dollars in 2007. We think that last year's volume may increase significantly and, according to estimates from Banco de Comercio Exterior de Venezuela, it may total nearly three billion dollars, the Cuban official noted.

Carricarte is heading the Cuban delegation that is attending the Fourth ExpoCuba Fair from Wednesday to Friday at Caracas' Military Circle, where a hundred companies from 15 industrial sectors are exhibiting their products and services.

This is the fourth exhibition we hold in Venezuela since 1998. The previous fair took place in 2001. Seven years have passed, and it is impressive how our trade of goods and services has increased, the Cuban deputy minister said. He noted the convenience and opportunity of these meetings to speed up regional integration in Latin America, and predicted the possibility of future Fairs of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA). We defend an integration that is radically different from neoliberal free trade agreements that expose our peoples to discriminated exploitation and enormous inequality, Carricarte stressed.
Our projects in the subcontinent, he added, are based on solidarity, on complementary productive efforts and on the search for useful employment, he noted.

Only this unity, in which entrepreneurs play a major role, will lead to true emancipation, as many of our peoples have been subjugated for years and have been victims of a brutal economic order, the minister pointed out. Carricarte also noted that ExpoCuba is a showcase for a wide range of products from the light, basic and medical industries that can be sold on the Venezuelan market, which is very versatile and has many needs to be met. He went on to say that professional services such as studies on risk, environmental protection and industrial automation, natural and biological products for cattle raising, and in the poultry and porcine sectors have a promising future in Venezuela.

In Venezuela, we are interested in the oil byproduct sector, because as Cuba's economy gets stronger, demand for those products increases in the plastic industry and other related sectors, Carricarte explained. In general, we envisage a great future for joint businesses that will expand the scope of our collaboration, even in setting up joint ventures, not only with Venezuela, but also with other ALBA nations, the Cuban minister noted.