Caracas. On Sunday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro suggested paying for coronavirus vaccines with oil, without providing further details on how the plan would work.
Crude oil exports from the OPEC member state, hit by a prolonged economic crisis, have fallen to their lowest levels in decades due to years of divestment, and since Washington imposed sanctions on state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) in 2019, halting sales. To the United States. States and discouraging other customers from buying oil.
Maduro said Venezuela is working to pay for the WHO’s COVAX vaccines that provide vaccinations to poor countries, as Venezuelan funds are frozen in accounts abroad due to sanctions and with oil shipments.
“Venezuela has oil tankers. It has customers to buy oil from us,” Maduro said in a speech broadcast on state television. “We are ready and ready, vaccine oil, but we will not ask for anyone. Venezuela does not kneel on anyone in this world,” he added.
Venezuela has received doses of vaccines from its ally Russia and China. The government and the opposition are in talks with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) about Venezuela’s access to vaccines through COVAX, but last week the government said it had not authorized the AstraZeneca PLC vaccine, one of the main vaccinations published by the program. In Latin America.
Two weeks ago, the opposition announced that it was arranging for permits from the US Treasury to use funds locked in accounts in that country to pay for the COVAX mechanism.
Washington describes Maduro, whose administration has had an economic meltdown, as a dictator accused of fraud in his re-election in 2018 and violating the human rights of the opposition. The Venezuelan President said that the United States is seeking to topple him in a coup to control Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest in the world, according to the data.
