Expat Village is edited and published by Iain Williams in Caracas
and Porlamar, Margarita Island, Venezuela.
CARACAS (AFP) — President Hugo Chavez said Saturday he has injected close to one billion dollars in Venezuela's petrochemical industry to turn it into the second-largest producer of polyethylene behind Brazil by 2011.
"A few days ago, I approved 950 million dollars to continue boosting petrochemical development," Chavez said at the opening of a refurbished polyethylene plant in Zulia state.
The investment and the new production facility are part of the "Socialist Petrochemical Revolution" program Chavez launched 11 months ago aimed at making Venezuela self-reliant in plastic products.
A byproduct of petroleum widely used in plastic products including plastic shopping bags, polyethylene production in Venezuela stood at 60,000 tons a year when Chavez took office 10 years ago. His plan is to raise it to 500,000 tons per year by 2011.
Chavez said his aim was to make Venezuela South America's second-largest producer of high-density polyethylene in South America behind Brazil.
He blamed the slow advance of the country's petrochemical industry to multinational companies bent on "keeping Venezuela dependent ... limiting its role to producing only oil" and not its derivatives.
"But now the revolution is here, and all that has stopped. Never again will we be a colony ... regardless of the cost," the leftist Chavez said.
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Expat Village is edited and published by Iain Williams in Caracas
and Porlamar, Margarita Island, Venezuela.
