Lima, April 27, 2006.- The Andean Business Advisory Council (CCEA),which groups together the five Andean countries’ most important business organizations and associations, today called upon the governments of the Member Countries to seek solutions to the current crisis in the Andean Community and backed the initiative to urgently convene a Presidential Summit.   

The call was made by Andean Business Advisory Council Chairman, José Luis Betancourt, from Venezuela, who held a press conference at the General Secretariat headquarters in Lima to reveal the Andean businessmen’s declaration about the present state of the Andean integration process.

During the press conference, the CCEA Chairman expressed the “concern and confusion” of Andean businessmen over President Hugo Chávez’s recent announcement that Venezuela was withdrawing from the “Hemisphere’s oldest and most advanced integration process and, without a doubt, the best possible expression of the unity of the Bolivarian countries.” 

After warning that Venezuela’s withdrawal would seriously jeopardize the region’s growth, Betancourt underscored the most important accomplishments of the integration process, such as the 82-fold increase in intra-Andean trade between 1970 and 2005, from 111 to 9 072 million dollars.

"This vigor has transcended the Andean Community and has made it possible to ease criteria so that its Members may negotiate jointly, individually or by groups.  Such are the cases of the negotiations with MERCOSUR, with Chile, with Mexico and, more recently, with the United States. The Member Countries were duly informed about all of these negotiations and together authorized them expressly,” Betancourt emphasized.   

The Secretary General of the Andean Community, Ambassador Allan Wagner Tizón, who joined the press conference at its close, expressed his appreciation for the declaration of the Andean businessmen that had just been made public and that the Chairman of CCEA had kindly delivered to him personally only minutes earlier. 

He stated that the Andean Labor Advisory Council --the Andean Integration System institution that groups together the Andean workers-- had made a similar statement last March 30th in La Paz, Bolivia.  Like the Business Council, the Labor Council expressed its support for the Andean integration process and --more specifically-- for the initiative of convening a Summit whose sole agenda item would be to consider the future of the integration process and to adopt measures to strengthen it. 

"These two statements --that of the businessmen now and that of the workers recently-- constitute the clearest demonstration possible that the ‘real forgers´ of integration consider it necessary to do their utmost to reinforce the Andean integration process,” the Secretary General stressed.