Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro expressed his support on Monday for Argentina and Brazil’s proposal to promote a common currency and thus reduce dependence on the dollar.
«I announce that Venezuela is ready and we support the initiative to create a Latin American and Caribbean currency,» Maduro said during his speech at a demonstration against U.S. sanctions.
«Independence! Union and liberation of Latin America and the Caribbean!», added the Venezuelan president, according to public media of the Caribbean country.
The first vice-president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), Diosdado Cabello, also participated in the massive demonstration and recalled that despite the change of discourse in Washington, the United States has not lifted any sanctions. «On the contrary, they have been adding sanctions, they have been increasing the pressures against our country, the threat, the blockade, it is the empire acting», he pointed out.
Thousands of people have participated in a demonstration in downtown Caracas called by the ruling party in memory of the mobilization that on January 23, 1958 put an end to the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez, to condemn the U.S. «blockade» and to demand the return of the assets seized abroad.
The President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and his Argentine counterpart, Alberto Fernández, met this Monday in Buenos Aires and announced the creation of a negotiating table at the highest level to discuss the introduction of a common currency to boost foreign trade and transactions between both countries, with a view to extending this union to the rest of Latin American countries «in the long term» and to prevent the region’s trade policy from depending on the U.S. dollar.
Lula explained that, for the time being, the currency to be known as ‘Sur’ is only a project that the economic teams of the governments of Argentina and Brazil hope to implement «soon».
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
