Caracas.- The President of the Republic of Haiti René Preval confirmed the political will of supporting the strengthening of the Petrocaribe Energy Cooperation Agreement. This announcement was made during his intervention in the Third Petrocaribe Summit of Heads of States and/or Government, being held this Saturday in the Simón Bolívar Hall, located in La Campiña-Headquarters of the People’s Ministry of Energy and Petroleum and PDVSA. 

“We express our political will of supporting and rendering assistance to the Petrocaribe Agreement, to be signed right away,” said Preval. He stated this after hearing the extraordinary results obtained in the rest of the signatories of the agreement. He even considered apologizing for “maybe not being very enthusiastic in other opportunities” regarding this initiative.

The Haitian President emphasized that the benefits of Petrocaribe have been materialized. He said: “We have been able to install three 60-megawatt electric power plants,” and the projects for infrastructure works of high social impact are already running. Therefore, people manifested their confidence: “When we see the job done in other countries, we have to be very optimistic because this is an extraordinary cooperation.” 

The President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, indicated that Preval should not apologize “because we understand the reasons of our peoples to doubt.” However, the Venezuelan President said that, as part of the support through the Alba-Caribe Fund, the resources necessary for the prompt building of 500 houses for the Haitian population shall be designated. In addition, 1.9 million dollars were allocated for the construction of the popular market in Port-au-Prince. “We all have to do our best for Haiti,” urged the Head of State. 

Currently Haiti is considering other projects in the hydrocarbon field, specifically in the downstream phase.