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Venezuela has received the first four billion dollars of a 20 billion dollar Chinese line of credit, money that will be used to finance development projects, Vice President Elias Jaua said Thursday.

With this first installment Venezuela will finance 19 projects, including "four in the electrical energy sector to continue to strengthen our national electrical system," which is recovering from an unprecedented series of blackouts in recent months, he said.

Over the next three years, the leftist government of President Hugo Chavez also intends to finance agricultural, mining and hydrocarbon projects Jaua said as he made the announcement on state-owned VTV television.

In April, the Chinese government announced it was extending a 20 billion dollar (16 billion euro) line of credit to Venezuela to finance long-term projects in agriculture, energy, industry and infrastructure.

The two countries have already established a 12 billion dollar, binational fund to invest in projects in a variety of sectors, including housing, defense and infrastructure.

Venezuela, the world's ninth-largest crude oil producer, exports 460,000 barrels of oil a day to China, and has a medium-range goal of boosting deliveries to more than a million barrels a day.

Trade between the two countries rose from 742 million dollars in 2003 to 10 billion dollars at the end of 2008, according to the Venezuelan government.

In the energy sector, the state-owned China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) earlier announced plans to invest 16 billion dollars to develop a bloc in Venezuela's vast and largely untapped Orinoco Heavy Oil Basin with its Venezuelan counterpart, PDVSA.

Story from AFP
AFP 07/29/2010 22:00

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