Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Thursday that his government had approved funding to build an iron and nickel foundry with Cuba.
Cuba is among the world’s largest producers of nickel, which is used to make stainless steel. Venezuela and Cuba signed an agreement last year to produce stainless steel using Cuban nickel — a project slated to involve some US$1.1 billion in joint investment.
“We have large iron reserves, Cuba has large nickel reserves,” Chavez said in a nationally televised address.
He said that Venezuela had not made the necessary alliances to process the metals domestically.
Chavez did not say on Thursday how much money it would take to build the foundry or where it would be located.
Since taking office in 1999, Chavez has developed close ties with communist-led Cuba through a series of cooperative agreements involving education, health and energy.
Among other agreements, Venezuela ships roughly 100,000 barrels of oil a day to Cuba under preferential terms, while Cuban President Raul Castro has sent thousands of doctors to help treat the poor in the South American country.
Chavez also said on Thursday that his close friend former Cuban president Fidel Castro predicted the fall of the US dollar.
Chavez said that the 81-year-old decades-long mentioned the prediction some time ago before signs of a weakening dollar had begun to appear.
“Fidel told me one day: ‘Chavez, it won’t be long before the crisis of the dollar occurs,”’ the Venezuelan leader said in a televised speech.
Chavez said Castro handed him a document he had written during one of their meetings in Havana that said “the United States has bought half the world with paper bills that don’t have real backing ... The world can’t sustain that bubble.”
“There it is, the crisis of the dollar,” Chavez said.
Chavez called the US’ economic woes a “terrible economic crisis” and said that some Americans were losing their jobs as financial woes spread.
Chavez also suggested that much worse was to come for the US economy.
“I think if things continue on like this in the United States, we’ll have to start preparing to receive the refugees here,” Chavez said. “I hope that doesn’t happen, but we may have to receive refugees from the United States here — poverty.”
The US remains the leading buyer of Venezuelan oil. However, the Venezuelan leader is seeking to rally opposition to Washington’s stances on everything from free-market economic policies to the war in Iraq.
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