Thursday, 27 Nov, 2008 Current Events

Russia and Venezuela agreed upon using their national currencies - Russian rubles and Venezuelan bolivars - as the main currencies for businesses between the two countries. During last meetings of the officials, it was also discussed the creation of financial reserves in national currencies. This was communicated by the President of Russian Federation Dmitri Medvedev on a press-conference in Caracas, after a meeting with the President of Venezuela, Ugo Chavez.

Medvedev also stated that military and technical partnership between the two countries is not to be treated as a potential threat to other countries.

The Russian President said that if it would be beneficial to the development of Latin American countries and if it would not be in conflict with the concept of world's multipolarity there were chances that Russia would participate at the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) as an associative member or in any other possible way.

In addition Medvedev said that Chavez' idea that the OPEC countries should try to achieve the goal of setting the prices for oil to $80-$100/barrel. Medvedev expressed his concern about the low oil prices, though he stated that he would like oil prices to be 'neither too low, nor too high'.

It should be mentioned that on 25 November, Chavez stated that low oil prices 'are not tragic for Venezuela'. On the other hand the experts' prognosis was that low oil prices could dramatically impact the economy of this country, as about 50% of Venezuela's revenue comes from oil exports.