Cuba and Venezuela sign agreements for $1.5 billion in projects

First Vice President Raúl Castro leads final session of 7th Meeting of Joint Intergovernmental Commission

THE approval of 355 cooperation projects worth $1.5 billion was the outcome of the 7th meeting of the Cuba-Venezuela Joint Intergovernmental Commission. The closing session, on the evening of February 28, was led by General of the Army Raúl Castro, first vice president of the Councils of State and Ministers.

Ministers Martha Lomas and Rafael Ramírez sign the Final Declaration of the 7th Meeting of the Cuba-Venezuela Joint Commission.

A framework agreement was signed during the meeting providing for the establishment in Venezuela of 11 ethanol plants and the development of sugarcane production for that purpose. Rafael Ramírez, Venezuelan minister of energy and oil, and Martha Lomas, Cuban minister of foreign investment and economic cooperation, signed the document as the presidents of the Joint Commission representing their respective governments.

That program is part of joint efforts to protect the environment, reduce consumption of fossil fuel and promote alternative energy sources.

The alcohol obtained from sugar cane is to be utilized in a mixture for gasoline production, with proven economic and environmental advantages. In this way, Cuba and Venezuela are implementing the concept of not using grains [such as corn] for producing fuel, given that it would be detrimental to the already precarious food situation of millions of human beings on the planet.

In addition, contracts were prepared for supplying the first four ethanol plants and were signed by Rafael Ramírez and Ulises Rosales del Toro, Cuban minister of sugar.

The meeting’s Final Declaration was also approved, and signed by Ramírez and Martha Lomas. That document sums up the work carried out by the two delegations since the meetings of working commissions in Caracas as a preparatory stage for this meeting. The Declaration also assesses the implementation of the 2006 cooperation program that came out of the Joint Commission’s sixth meeting, and includes appendixes with a detailed list of the 2007 projects, their respective budgets and the general conditions of methodology and proceedings for implementing the agreement.

According to the Joint Declaration of the 7th meeting, presented by Martha Lomas, the Cuba-Venezuela Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement, approved on October 30, 2000 by Fidel and Chávez, is expanding annually in magnitude, diversity and complexity.

That can be seen by significant quantitative and qualitative results in the principal economic and social sectors, including health, education, sports, energy, sugarcane production and that of other agricultural areas, informatics and communications, constituting a valuable contribution to the emergence of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), to whose fulfillment Presidents Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez have dedicated such tremendous effort.

In the health sector, the document cites examples including the Barrio Adentro I Program (Into the Neighborhood), which since its start in April 2003 has provided more than 223 million medical consultations and related activities in Venezuela with the participation of Cuban doctors.

Progress is also being made by the Barrio Adentro II program, which includes 307 Comprehensive Diagnostics Centers, 406 Comprehensive Rehabilitation Wards and 11 High Technology Centers. It is expected that the program will conclude in July with the opening of 600 of the first facilities, 600 of the second and 35 of the third.

Under both programs, a total of 84,962 lives have been saved.

Another program, Operation Miracle, which began in July 2004, met its goal of providing 300,000 operations for various eyesight conditions by the end of 2006, and has now exceeded 315,000. Eleven new ophthalmological centers with 27 surgical posts are now operating in Venezuela.

The Declaration also notes that in the area of education, some 20,000 students are being educated as doctors in Venezuela by Cuban professors under the Barrio Adentro program, and about 2,400 of them are studying in Cuba at various educational institutions.

The Mission Robinson program, for its part, using the Cuban “I Can Do It” literacy method complimented by teaching materials, contributed to Venezuela being able to proclaim itself, on October 28, 2005, an illiteracy-free country, after more than 1.5 million people learned how to read and write. Some 400 Cuban advisers continue to be part of everyday labors in the Venezuelan education system.

Likewise, it was noted that trade between the two countries has increased from $912 million in the year 2000 to a record figure of $2.64 billion in 2006.

During the meeting, a photography exhibition was opened featuring images of the close friendship between Fidel and Chávez. The exhibit’s opening was led by Venezuelan poet Tarek William, who is also governor of the state of Anzoátegui.

The closing session, held at the International Convention Center in Havana, was attended by Carlos Lage, secretary of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers, and Bruno Rodríguez, interim minister of foreign affairs; Alí Rodríguez and Germán Sánchez, the ambassadors of Venezuela in Havana and Cuba in Caracas, respectively; a large group of ministers, deputy ministers, state governors and business executives from the land of Bolívar, and leaders of the Communist Party and government of Cuba.