Lima, October 17, 2006.- The Andean countries and Venezuela reached an agreement yesterday to, within thirty days’ time, define the regulations that will govern their trade relations over the next five years, in view of Venezuela’s denunciation of the Cartagena Agreement last April 22^nd. 

The two parties reached this agreement at the first meeting of the CAN-Venezuela joint Working Group --created through the Memorandum of Understanding--, held yesterday at the CAN headquarters in Lima and lasting until after 10 p.m., in which high-level representatives of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, on the one hand, and Venezuela, on the other, participated, together with those of the CAN General Secretariat.   

The CAN Member Countries and Venezuela also agreed to set up five technical groups and approved the guidelines on which those groups should base the definition of temporary regulations on origin, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, safeguards, technical barriers to trade, dispute settlement and institutional matters. 

A timetable for the technical groups was approved and it was agreed to hold the Second Meeting of the CAN-Venezuela Working Group in Lima, Peru, on November 16, 2006, following the technical meetings.

The Working Group Meeting was co-chaired by Aldo Ruiz Rivero, Director General for Negotiations, Integration and Trade Agreements of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship of Bolivia, on behalf of the CAN Member Countries, and William Contreras, Vice-Minister of Trade of the Ministry of Light Industry and Trade, on behalf of Venezuela. 

After pointing up the positive results of the Meeting, the acting Secretary General of the CAN, Alfredo Fuentes Hernández, stressed that the agreements reached will not only guarantee the free flow of trade  between the two parties, but will also help stimulate it even further at a time when it is growing noticeably, as reflected in the more-than 21 percent increase in CAN exports to Venezuela between January and August of this year, to reach a value of over 2 046 million dollars, compared with 1085 million dollars over the same period of the previous year.