Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez speaks at the Bolivarian Historical Block Congress, Caracas, November 15, 2024. Photo: VTV.
The vice president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, reported that the proposals coming out of the Great Congress of the Bolivarian Historical Block will help in the construction of the economic transformation program that Venezuela requires.
During her speech at the opening ceremony of the Congress, Thursday, November 15, at the Convention Center in Simón Bolívar Park in La Carlota, Caracas, the Venezuelan vice president also highlighted the over 100 proposals that had been submitted.
“I welcome these more than 100 proposals that have been raised … because they will help us to build the economic transformation program that Venezuela needs, in order to become a powerful country,” she said.
Rodríguez recalled the words of the Liberator Simón Bolívar about Venezuela being at the centre of the universe, “not with arrogance, but at the service of the peoples of the world,” adding that economic transformation is essential and fundamental to achieving this.
She explained that the contributions made during the congress are aimed at defeating the criminal blockade and at consolidating popular organization and the communal state, democracy from the bases, organization in the territory, with the people, “so that this grassroots government and this communal state can lead the destiny of Venezuela to become a powerful Venezuela. These are key factors in overcoming the rentier model and advancing towards a productive model.”
“We need a great national consciousness so that our people, the working people, the organized people, will carry out all the productive processes that will convert Venezuela into an economic power, which will only be possible if we are the political power that Commander Hugo Chávez called us to be,” she added.
Positive steps in economic transformation
Vice President Rodríguez highlighted the Economic Recovery, Growth and Prosperity Program that the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, presented in August 2018 to confront the economic war against the country.
Rodríguez said that the economic transformation has taken its first victorious step, which is “being productive, changing the concept of a rentier Venezuela, based on oil income, where productive business elites had become accustomed to stealing the country’s income for their own enrichment and capital concentration, ignoring national development.”
“We have already blunted that model in response to the call made by President Nicolás Maduro to transform the rentier model into a productive model, and what I have heard is that it has borne fruit, because practically all the proposals that have been made … are focused on productive engines of the economy: agriculture, fishing, aquaculture, mining, oil, gas, petrochemicals, basic industries, the defense of our monetary sovereignty which is fundamental for development and financing,” she added.
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Energy sovereignty policy
The vice president also recalled that Commander Hugo Chávez was the first president of Venezuela to bring about a policy of energy sovereignty.
“We came from a fake nationalization—there was no real nationalization process,” she expressed in this regard. “The delivery of our energy resources to the transnationals for nothing had been perpetuated, where they had operational control, technological control, and forcing us into dependence. It was Commander Hugo Chávez who said ‘oil, energy and hydrocarbons are for the Venezuelan people.’ But that work must be completed.”
Rodríguez spoke about the oil industry as a lever for national development, amid a savage US blockade and an all-encompassing aggression against the Venezuelan oil sector.
“An industry that was born from the heart of transnationals, its concept, actions, even its union conception was marked by transnational companies,” she said in reference to the origins of the Venezuelan oil industry. “Trade unionism in Venezuela derived from the oil industry. The Labor Law, before the reform made by Chávez, derived from the oil industry, dominated and controlled by transnationals, mainly imposed from the global North.”
Representatives from various economic and productive sectors of the country are participating in this meeting, analyzing, debating and presenting proposals on the Seven Transformations (7T) and for the strengthening of the government model together with the People’s Power.
(Últimas Noticias) by María Eugenia Rodríguez
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SC
