Venezuela denounces effects of the US blockade in planning conference in Uruguay


During the 17th Conference of Ministers and Heads of Planning of Latin America and the Caribbean that takes place in Montevideo, Uruguay, the Minister of People’s Power for Planning, Ricardo Menéndez, denounced the economic, commercial and financial blockade to which our nation, product of the coercive and unilateral measures of the United States.
In his speech, the head of the Planning portfolio said that foreign banks have blocked more than 5 billion euros and 120 billion dollars, which makes it impossible to buy the necessary medicines, food and supplies for the Venezuelan people.
“Venezuela has no sources of income from an international point of view because resources are blocked in international bank accounts (…) The economic aggression that Venezuela has is an aggression that has no precedence worldwide. We are talking about more than 120 billion dollars of losses and more than 5 billion euros blocked in foreign accounts. There are the resources to solve a good part of the problems of Venezuelans”, he said.
In that sense, he stressed that the Bolivarian Revolution, as the only option, has chosen to develop the productive economy, one of the main objectives set forth in the Plan de la Patria (Homeland Plan), as a new model of commercial decolonization to break the imperialist scheme.
“Planning could not be the subject of an elite, but it has to be a process empowered by the people. Therefore, we have designed a development plan for the nation, which is the result of a massive process of participation of popular power. That means that there have been more than 34,000 assemblies, more than 3 million people have participated and that has allowed the development of the different aspects of the Homeland Plan”, he said.