Venezuela intensifies business relations with the Basque Country
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- - The Venezuelan Ambassador to Spain and a delegation of entrepreneurs from that country met with the Department for Industry, Innovation, Trade and Tourism, and Basque employers.
- - The Open Day for Basque Companies attracted nearly one hundred companies interested in possible business opportunities in Venezuela.
Today, Friday 15 June, the Basque Government's Deputy Minister for Innovation and Technology, Juan Goicolea, the Chairman of Confebask, Miguel Ángel Lujua, and the General Manager of the SPRI Group, Tomás Orbea, met with the Venezuelan Ambassador to Spain, Bernardo Álvarez, and a delegation of entrepreneurs from the Republic of Venezuela to strengthen ties and consolidate their business relations.
The visit was arranged after the interest expressed by the Venezuelan Embassy to present the PDVSA-Petróleos de Venezuela Strategic Plan (Venezuela's state-run oil and natural gas company) to the Basque business community. The meeting was held at the Guggenheim Museum. Bernardo Álvarez started by meeting with the representatives of the leading companies of different business sector, raw material transformation, energy, electronic development, and oil and gas, where he consolidated the ties and presented the Oil Strategic Plan of this Latin-American country.
Tomás Orbea, the General Manager of the SPRI, the main group of public corporations under the Department for Industry, Innovation, Trade and Tourism dedicated to helping the Basque business structure, brought the international meeting and business seminar to a close by setting out the services and programmes offered by the Department for Industry, Innovation, Trade and Tourism, through the SPRI, to encourage company or business internationalisation initiatives abroad.
Tomás Orbea thus stressed the work of the SPRI Internationalisation Division in the 422 companies that had embarked on or improved their business projects abroad up until 2011. The increase of the companies that have set up abroad was 105.5% up on 2010.
On the other hand, he stressed that Basque investment abroad was 7.4% of the GDP in 2011 and this figure was 144% up on 2010. With regard to foreign investment in the Basque Country, it stood at 0.8% of the GDP in 2011 and was up 245% on 2010.
DATA AND FIGURES ON VENEZUELA
This Latin-American country is mainly an oil-based economy. Its main business activity is to exploit and refine oil for exportation and internal consumption. It is the second major producer of this resource in Latin America and oil accounts for approximately 26% of its GDP and 80% of exports. On the other hand, it is one of the largest natural gas producers in the world.
In 2011, its economy grew by 4% and the figure for the first quarter of 2012 rose by 5.6%. As regard other business sectors, special mention should be made of the dynamics of the goods and services sector (6.6%), the manufacturing industry (3.5%) and construction (3.4%).
Venezuelan exports abroad stood at 42.8% in 2011, with over 110,000 million and there were 56,000 million euros in imports. Venezuela is in 15th place in the Basque export ranking.
Bilbao, 15 June 2012.
In the photo,
From left to right, Begoña Aldekogaray, Head of the SPRI Latin American Division, Catalina Chamorro, Basque Government Director for Internationalisation, María Berguiero, CEO of Petróleos de Venezuela, Juan Goicolea, Basque Government's Deputy Minister for Innovation, Bernardo Álvarez, Venezuelan Ambassador to Spain, Miguel Angel Lujua, Chairman of Confebask, Yolanda Rojas, Venezuelan Consulate, Nuria López de Guereñu, Confebask General Secretary, Elsa Gouveia and Alejandro González from Corporación Venezolana Guayana, and David Fernández, Director of SPRI International Director.
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