Andean Community

The withdrawal of the CAN by Venezuela impacts significantly, both in Venezuela and in other countries, since the economies will suffer a decline as a result of the absence of export market. The balance of payments, since years ago, Venezuela favoured, but reality has changed thus favoring to Colombia. To all this we must to add, says President Chavez that the United States have signed a free trade agreement with Colombia, which killed the Andean Community. I’ve announced: Venezuela renounces the Andean Community and we’re going on the Andean Community, said in a speech in the governorate of the State’s communities, in this city, where wine at the head of a business delegation. Chavez repeated impatiently: the Andean Community makes no sense. That is dead. How you will sense an Andean Community in which signed a free trade agreement with United States without even coordinating with other countries?.

He endorsed his words echoing the Bolivian President, Evo Morales, on the situation that has been created in Bolivia after the colombo-estadounidense agreement: Bolivia lost its largest market for soybeans, he said. With the agreement, Colombia would buy United States soybean and leave aside the approximately 900,000 tons per year who acquires this product of Bolivia. Chavez added as the initiative American create the Area of free trade of the Americas (FTAA) is dead, Washington now seeks individual agreements with the countries of the region. The President gave to know how course would be given to the Venezuelan abandonment of the CAN, which was born in 1969 as a project of integration of the Andean countries, including Chile, who later departed not. It was not clear whether abandonment would mean the immediate breaking of all tariff agreements entered into in the Group and the future of the Andean Promotion Corporation (CAF), of which Venezuela is one of the strongest partners..