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Agreements in excess of $700 million
to be signed
BY HAYDEE LEON MOYA—Granma International
staff writer—
SOME
300 cooperation agreement projects are to be
discussed and signed during the working sessions of
the 7th Venezuela-Cuba Intergovernmental Joint
Commission, underway in the capital and headed by
Marta Lomas, minister of foreign investment and
economic cooperation, and Alí Rodríguez and Germán
Sánchez, ambassadors of the South American country
in Havana and of Cuba in Caracas, respectively.
The
projects involve 14 ministries of the Bolivarian
Republic of Venezuela and their Cuban counterparts
and include those related with migratory matters,
science, sports, education, culture, energy and oil,
defense, social security programs and agriculture.
During
the opening session of the Joint Commission in the
headquarters of the Cuban Ministry of Agriculture,
it was announced that cooperation agreements between
the two nations totaled more than $700 million in
2006. This year the volume should grow to more than
$1 billion.
Beyond
those figures, which are revealing in themselves,
the agreements, dating back to 2001, have fostered a
human relationship of exceptional reach. On that
aspect Alí Rodríguez highlighted Cuba’s contribution
to the literacy program for more than one million
Venezuelans, free medical attention to more than 17
million inhabitants and the significance of the
energy revolution in breaking the U.S. blockade of
Cuba. These are precisely the most significant and
concrete results of the Bolivarian Alternative for
the Americas (ALBA), now being joined by other
nations of the continent like Nicaragua, Bolivia and
Ecuador.
The working session of this Intergovernmental
Commission in the International Conference Center
conclude on Wednesday with the signing of various
documents containing new cooperation agreements
between the two nations, and the inauguration of a
photo exhibition.
Translated by Granma International
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