China has agreed to invest more than $20bn (£13.2bn) in Venezuela to help it overcome an economic slump exacerbated by plummeting oil prices, the Venezuelan president has announced.

Nicolás Maduro has been in Beijing since Monday to participate in a major meeting between China and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) – a coalition of 33 countries that was formed in 2011. He announced the $20bn deal after meeting with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping.

“We rounded up more than $20 billion in investment,” Maduro told

Venezuela’s official AVN news agency.

The Venezuelan president did not give further details, and it remains unclear whether the sum represents a fresh arrangement or is part of pre-existing oil-for-loans deals. Beijing has not confirmed Maduro’s claim, and even if the investments are new, it is far from certain that this is money that the Venezuelan government can use for imports or debt repayments.



Maduro told the Caracas-based VTV television channel that the money will be used for housing, technology, energy and infrastructure projects. “With the China Development Bank and Bank of China we are strengthening a series of financing deals that have been approved on this visit.”

Xi said on Thursday China would invest $250bn in Latin American countries over the next decade. The move is part of an attempt by Beijing to boost its influence in a region that tends to look to the US as its largest trading partner.

Beijing has extended $50bn of credit to Venezuela since 2007, mostly in exchange for oil shipments. The country exports about 600,000 barrels of oil to China a day, nearly half of which go towards repaying its loans.

Last July, China offered to loan Venezuela $4bn while Xi visited Caracas during a 10-day tour of Latin American.

He described Maduro as “an old and good friend of the Chinese people” at a meeting on Wednesday. “It can be said that the development of China-Venezuela relations and win-win positive cooperation have been raised to a new level,” Xi said.

Maduro’s popularity has plunged with his country’s economy – his approval rating stood at 24.5% in November, less than half of what is was when he took office. Analysts say that deepening social, political and economic crises under his leadership presents a challenge to Beijing, which forged a strong diplomatic relationship with Hugo Chávez, the country’s leader from 1999 until his death in 2013.

“China created a special relationship with Chávez when he was alive and well, and in political control of the situation in Venezuela – even if some of his economic policies were ultimately unsustainable,” said Matt Ferchen, an expert on the China-Latin America relationship at Tsinghua University in Beijing. “And Maduro today is dealing with some of these outcomes.

“China is now dealing with the aftermath of this, as the situation in Venezuela has significantly deteriorated … [China] holds all the cards for a place that’s falling apart. So what do they do with that? Just looking at the oil side of things – even if they put forward another however many billions of dollars, there’s zero guarantee that that will line up with more oil flow.”

Crude oil makes up 95% of Venezuela’s exports, and with oil prices plunging by more than half since the summer fears have grown that the country could default on its loans. Petrol in Venezuela is now the cheapest in the world, at 4 cents a gallon, even as its citizens face shortages of basic goods like toilet paper, cooking oil, and detergent.

Maduro has blamed the economic woes on a plot by political opponents.

“Sometimes there’s an international conspiracy to try making Venezuela look like it’s bankrupt,” he said in Wednesday’s broadcast. “Venezuela has its own economic power, with a productive people, with gigantic economic potential, with the largest oil reserves in the world.”

Before the CELAC forum convened in Beijing this week, China also pledged $7.5bn in financing for Ecuador, another left-leaning Latin American state that has been hit hard by falling oil prices.

“My sense is that Maduro is kind of crashing the party,” said Ferchen. “Chávez used to do this too – he would show up in Beijing, and China had to put on a good face for him. But it wasn’t always necessarily a cause for joy.”