国产热热热精品,亚洲视频久久】日韩,三级婷婷在线久久,99人妻精品视频,精品九热人人肉肉在线,AV东京热一区二区,91po在线视频观看,久久激情宗合,青青草黄色手机视频

   

Chavez offers billions in Latin America

(AP)
Updated: 2007-08-27 09:45

Most of the funding - $6.3 billion - involves energy projects, some of which directly benefit Venezuela's oil industry, such as a $3.5 billion refinery to be built in Nicaragua. That also includes funding for electricity plants in Haiti and Bolivia, and an estimated $1.6 billion in fuel financing to at least 17 nations.

Venezuela has pledged $772 million in development aid, including AIDS treatment in Nicaragua, housing in Dominica and Cuban doctors in Haiti.

In Bolivia, $20 million went directly to mayors selected by leftist President Evo Morales for projects including health clinics and schools. Mayor Miguel Avila gratefully accepted a $427,000 check for his town of San Lorenzo to build a new farmers' market.

Critics warn that scant oversight leads to waste and corruption.

"You don't do things well by just giving money away," said Liliana Rojas-Suarez, a former IMF economist at the Washington-based Center for Global Development. "If you give money without any conditions attached, without any expectations, without anything, what are the incentives?"

But Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic Policy Research says Chavez has succeeded in providing more financing options and breaking up a "creditors' cartel" of Washington-based lenders whose economic prescriptions failed to improve the lives of the poor.

Chavez helped Argentina pay off its IMF debt by buying some $5.1 billion in Argentine bonds in recent years, and now proposes a "Bank of the South" that would use billions from Venezuela's international reserves as seed money.

Meanwhile, Venezuela's state development bank, Bandes, is expanding into Bolivia, Uruguay, Honduras, Guatemala and Haiti. In Nicaragua, it is offering loans at just 5 percent interest, compared to 35 percent by some private banks.

Nicaraguan farmer Juan Vicente Castillo, whose cooperative plans to grow black beans to pay off part of a $750,000 Bandes loan, says: "We are very grateful to President Chavez's government for this loan that the commercial banks wouldn't give."

      1   2   3     


Top World News  
Today's Top News  
Most Commented/Read Stories in 48 Hours
瑞金市| 定远县| 古浪县| 阿瓦提县| 乌鲁木齐县| 普兰店市| 太湖县| 通州市| 神池县| 永昌县| 竹山县| 扎鲁特旗| 澄城县| 永丰县| 巩留县| 桃源县| 扎鲁特旗| 壤塘县| 丹东市| 万宁市| 车致| 株洲县| 容城县| 长岛县| 静宁县| 望奎县| 荥经县| 综艺| 枣庄市| 华池县| 和林格尔县| 富顺县| 黄大仙区| 杭州市| 易门县| 张北县| 怀远县| 阳东县| 张家川| 稷山县| 北安市|