On December 3, China CAMC Engineering Co. Ltd.(CAMCE)signed 5 commercial contracts with Venezuela Agriculture Company and the National Rural Development Agency under the Ministry of Agriculture and Land of Venezuela with the total contract value amounting to about Rmb.7.145 billion yuan.

These five projects are respectively the Industrial Park for Agricultural and sideline products processing equipment manufacturing plants, Integrated Agricultural Development Projects in Orinoco Delta State, Phase II of Disnatos Integrated Agricultural Development Projects, Pilido—Bersela Integrated Agricultural Development Projects and the Reconstruction and Extension of Guarico River Irrigation System (Phase III). The construction period specified in the contracts is of 24 months.

The economic and trade cooperation between SINOMACH and Venezuela is long standing. As early as in 1990, SINOMACH started to export agricultural machinery to Venezuela and provided complete after sales services. In October 1999, during the first official state visit to China by President Chavez, the Venezuelan Government signed with the Chinese Government the intergovernmental framework agreement on the use of buyer’s credit loan to be provided by Bank of China for the purchase of agricultural machinery. Under this framework agreement, China CAMC Engineering Co. Ltd. (CAMCE), an affiliation of SINOMACH, started to execute the project for the supply of agricultural machinery, thus unveiling the prologue for cooperation projects between the two governments.

The energy and agriculture are two key fields for the cooperation between China and Venezuela. In April 2001, President Chavez and President Jiang Zemin arrived at the common understanding for further enhancing the cooperation between the two countries in the fields of agriculture and energy during President Jiang Zemin‘s visit in Venezuela. In May of the same year, the first batch of agricultural machinery was shipped to Venezuela in large quantity.

With the high attention of leaders of both sides and of the two governments, since 2001, SINOMACH successively implemented a number of agricultural infrastructure construction projects and agricultural machinery supply projects in Venezuela, mainly including the Water Supply Project in Falcon State, Integrated Agricultural Development Project in Guarico Irrigation Zone, Agricultural Produce Processing Plant Projects and others. SINOMACH has supplied to Venezuela on the accumulated basis more than 4,000 units (sets) of various agricultural producing and processing equipment, completed the construction of 5 agricultural produce processing plants, finished laying of 180 Km water supply pipelines, and completed the reconstruction of 200 Km Guarico Irrigation systems that could cover 30,000-hectre irrigation areas. The accumulated contract values amounted to 3 billion U.S. dollars. At present, the company directly employs about 100 local staffs and has created more than 1,000 job opportunities for local people.

China and Venezuela have achieved significant developments in the cooperation of agricultural field, which developed from the simple supply of agricultural production and processing equipment in the early period to the construction of large-scale agricultural infrastructural facilities, the optimized planting of agricultural crops, the construction of agricultural produce processing parks and the cooperation in the manufacture of agricultural machinery. Through the implementation of these projects, the agricultural infrastructural facilities and production conditions in Venezuela have been improved and Venezuela could, to a great extent, resolve its grain security problems by way of the self-sufficiency, thus providing the powerful guarantee for maintaining its national sovereignty.