Felucho Jiménez, former president of the Dominican Petroleum Refinery (Refidomsa), reiterated that President Luis Abinader’s statements on fuel prices through the Petrocaribe agreement denote misinformation about what said agreement meant between Venezuela and the countries of the region.
“The Petrocaribe agreement had no impact on the price of oil. Venezuela did not sell its oil at a preferential price to the Dominican Republic or to another of the signatory countries of the agreement,” explained Jiménez, clarifying that it was a financing operation.
Referring to the reform of the Hydrocarbons Law to reduce fuel prices, as promised by the Government, Felucho Jiménez made the clarification that the international oil price cannot be changed by law.
“You by law cannot modify the price of international oil, the cost of freight or shipping insurance. There are a series of elements of the price of hydrocarbons that have nothing to do with a law”, he expressed.
He specified that oil prices are set at a global level, indicating that the difference in prices is based on the cost of transportation to move the liquid from the state of Texas to Europe.
He said that the financing scales were very useful for the economies of the Caribbean countries.
“That helped a lot to the economies of the Caribbean countries that benefited from the program but in the sense of the balance of payment. What had to be paid was a percentage of the value of the energy basket discounted over 30 days and then there was short-term and long-term financing at low interest,” he said, participating in the Wake up program with CDN, where he presented a table that specified the percentage to be paid with the purchase and the one that was financed, subject to the international price of crude oil.
Jiménez said that the Dominican Government, through the Ministry of Finance, was the one who signed and owed Venezuela.
Debt was renegotiated on beneficial terms
He stated that when Danilo Medina became president in 2012, the country owed Venezuela 3 billion dollars, while in the Abinader government, in 2020, the debt was 181 million dollars. “Danilo had renegotiated the purchase of Petrocaribe in terms beneficial to the country, saving us almost 2.6 billion dollars of debt.”
