Introduction
Today’s column, along with next week’s will concentrate on 1) an evaluation of the role the PetroCaribe initiative has been playing in the region’s regime of crude oil importation, since its establishment in 2005, and 2) an assessment of the near-to-medium prospects of this initiative, with special reference to Guyana’s membership. As I hinted last week, the non-transparent management and operational structure of the initiative combined with its poor track-record in regard to the timely provision of financial, economic, and other operational data, have proved to be formidable hindrances to my fulfilling the objectives indicated above. It should be noted however that the several weaknesses of PetroCaribe, which I shall reference later are not confined to the initiative’s patron, Venezuela, but instead apply across the board to every PetroCaribe member.
In the following section I provide selected indicators of those features of the initiative’s financial and economic operations that I was able to obtain.
Operational features
While the reported estimates I have come across vary significantly, particularly between those found in English and Spanish publications, there appears to be some general agreement that Venezuela has disbursed since 2005 to date approximately US$28-30 billion to members of PetroCaribe. The subsidy value of this has been roughly estimated to average US$8 billion per year over recent years. Secondly, the