Venezuela Foreign Minister calls on Ghanaian Counterpart

By
Patience Gbeze, GNA

Accra, July 9, GNA – Ms Shirley Ayorkor
Botchwey, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration has urged the
Government of Venezuela to partner Ghana on government policy initiatives to
enhance economic transformation for both countries.

She said Ghana had adopted a three-pronged
economic transformation programme that would accelerate investments in
agriculture, strategic infrastructure and industrialisation.

The Minister said this when Mr Jorge Arreaza,
Minister of Foreign Affairs  of the
Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela paid a courtesy call on her in her office on
Monday.

The Venezuela Foreign Minister and his
delegation were in Ghana as part of their three countries visit to Africa to
seek investments opportunities and bilateral cooperation with the visiting
countries.

Ms Botchwey mentioned “One District, One
Factory”, One Village, One Dam” and “Planting for Food and jobs” as initiatives
they believed should be catalyst to propel the nation’s economic transformation
agenda through job-creation to improved livelihoods.

She said the visit was an opportune time for
the two countries to critically assess and weigh the positive contributions
their relations have made to the social and economic development of the two
countries.

Such visits, she said present the two
countries the opportunity to open up, interact and find common grounds to
address some of the challenges confronting their efforts to foster bonds of
friendship and cooperation.

“Although Ghana and Venezuela have signed a
Cooperation Framework Agreement and a Memorandum of Understanding for Political
Consultations, there is now an urgent need for both sides to take advantage of
the various opportunities that exist in our countries by enhancing interactions
in trade and investment activities, particularly in the Oil and Gas sector.

“At the multinational level, cooperation
between our two countries has been manifested in the areas of joint support for
candidatures, sponsorship of resolutions and consultations on a wide range of
issues of common interest, including in the areas of promotion of South-South
cooperation and calls for a fair international trading system and reform of the
UN Security Council, among others,” she added.

Ms Botchwey said: “As a leading player in the
global oil and gas industry, and being a founding member of the Organisation of
Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Venezuela holds the world’s largest
proven oil reserves, with crude oil being the main product exported” and
expressed the hope that the two countries would partner in the Oil and Gas
sector for their mutual benefit.

She said she was hopeful that the visit would
further strengthen the friendship that has existed between the two over the
years and urged the two to extend the mutually-beneficial cooperation into
various other sectors, particularly in energy, health, education, and technical
expertise/skills development.

The Minister, therefore, reassured her
counterpart that Government of Ghana’s determination to continue to work
towards further enhancement of the already-cordial relations with Venezuela.

She also thanked the Government of Venezuela
for assisting Ghana with the supply of subsidised oil in the past, adding, the
gesture, as timely as it was, enabled Ghana to address some critical challenges
at those times.

Mr Jorge Arreaza, on his part, said the future
of humanity depended on their ability to come together to harness their natural
resources to build the two countries.

He said Ghana and Venezuela have economies
that compliments each other in many areas and assured that they would depend on
the expertise of both countries to achieve the goals of the cooperation.

Ghana and Venezuela have enjoyed very good
relations since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two
countries in 1964.

GNA

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