State will take main role in Venezuela’s economic development, says Ch

State will take main role in Venezuela’s economic development, says Ch
By Larry Moonze in Havana, Cuba
Sunday August 24, 2008 [04:00]

VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chavez has said the state would assume the main role in Venezuela’s economic development. And President Chavez announced the Orinoco Socialist Development Project aimed at giving integral impetus to the area, home to Venezuela’s huge oil reserves.

Before Venezuelan Television programme Dando y Dando on Thursday, President Chavez said the nationalisation of key companies was part of a national policy on industrial development that seeks to offer better goods and services to the population.

“We are not going to create a capitalist state,” President Chavez said as quoted by the ABN agency report. “The state will assume the main role in Venezuela’s economic development.”

He said the recent nationalisation of the cement industry would facilitate increased cement production to meet national requirements.

President Chavez said Venezuela was done with private monopolies and now cement prices would reduce.

He said the government would now move to create people’s construction workshops so that organised people could speed up the solutions to housing problem.

President Chavez said a capitalist model could not have a solution to housing deficit. However, he said private sector participation in housing construction was important.

“It is important that this sector contributes to our plans and it should contribute. However, it has been proved that private sector cannot solve the housing problem,” President Chavez said. “The state and communities are the ones able to solve it.”

And President Chavez announced the creation of a Special Use Area at the Orinoco Oil Belt, in accordance with the article 37 of the Organic Law on Planning and Administration of Territory Ordering. He said the zone would help boost the Orinoco Socialist Project which would allow a comprehensive development in the region with the world’s largest oil reserves.

President Chavez said the project to develop the area was formed under an agro-productive development plan 2008-2012 in which more than 150,000 hectares of tapioca-plant, cotton, soy, sugar cane would be cultivated as well as the construction of a poultry, cattle, and bovine integral complex.

In addition, he mentioned the construction of four oil improving plants allowing the conversion of extra-heavy oil into light oil in the same zone where it is exploited.

President Chavez said the project envisaged the construction of a refinery with a capacity of 400,000 barrels a day and a city near the refinery.

He said the socialist project included the construction and improvement of houses, roads, goods and services and a 660 kilometres highway.

President Chavez said 878 million bolívares fuertes (about US $409 million) was approved for the project.

He said 13 camps would be installed along the territory to carry out the first stage of the project.

President Chavez said the project was labelled “the biggest development plan of the 21st Century”.

President Chavez said the project, to incorporate community participation, would run parallel with the development of the Orinoco Belt Oil Project in order to do away with the scheme of exploitation for profit that had ignored social investment.