Venezuelas vice president will travel to Havana this Monday

HAVANA, March 7 (EFE)  The vice president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, will make a working visit to Cuba on Monday,

March 8 to participate in the XXI Mixed Intergovernmental Commission between the two countries, reported this Sunday the Foreign Ministry of Havana.

Rodríguez also plans to hold talks with Cuban authorities and carry out other activities, according to the brief note announcing his visit on the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

It will be the second visit of the Venezuelan vice president to Cuba so far this year after the one made in mid-January when she was in Havana to present the so-called “Anti-Blockade Law”, an initiative by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to evade economic sanctions from the United States.

At the end of that trip, Rodríguez claimed to have developed a “busy schedule” and that in the meetings he shared with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and other high-ranking officials of the island, he had discussed “the progress of economic and commercial ties. and cooperation “.

Two weeks later, Delcy Rodríguez led a meeting in Caracas with the Cuban Vice Prime Minister and co-president of the Intergovernmental Commission of the Comprehensive Cuba-Venezuela Cooperation Agreement, Ricardo Cabrisas.

At that meeting, the Governments of Cuba and Venezuela reviewed their bilateral cooperation programs in a meeting held this Saturday in Caracas by officials from both countries, which served as preparation for another meeting to be held in Havana.

Cabrisas then declared that this meeting with Rodríguez served as preparation for the session of the Intergovernmental Commission that will take place in the Cuban capital now.

According to official data, Venezuela and Cuba have signed more than 13,000 cooperation agreements in different areas.

Since 2001, both governments have had a broad cooperation agreement whereby Havana receives crude at preferential prices in exchange for the shipment to Venezuela of professional services, mainly doctors and teachers.

The fall in Venezuelan aid in recent years has been one of the key factors in the serious crisis that Cuba is currently facing, a situation that has also been influenced by the tightening of US sanctions, the delay in reforms to alleviate the inefficiency of the Cuban economic model and, in the last year, the coronavirus pandemic.