Meeting at the Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela

On Thursday, 12 June 2014, Mr. Janez Podobnik, ICPE Acting Director General, with his team members has met Mr. Wilmer Armando Depablos, Chargé d’Affairs Ad Hoc of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The main purpose of the meeting was to discuss the appropriate manners to re-establish of cooperation between the ICPE and Venezuela.

Venezuela was a full Member State of ICPE from 1980 and played an active role in the organization as well as was active in the governing bodies of ICPE. In 2007, after having met all the financial obligations towards ICPE, Venezuela withdrew from its membership. More recently Venezuela participated at the seminar ‘The New Commercial Diplomacy: Open the Door to a Trade and Investment Driven Recovery’, held at the ICPE in Ljubljana from 15 to 17 November 2009.

In the meeting Mr. Depablos presented the current state of affairs of Venezuela with the extensive focus on the internationalization of the Venezuelan economy, economic growth and opportunities for international cooperation with Slovenia as well as other ICPE Member States. Also, it was noted that the lack of formal agreement on the cooperation framework impedes the economic relations between Slovenia and Venezuela.

Mr. Podobnik highlighted that one of the main topics of ICPE is internationalization and economic diplomacy as the way to an essential part of modern diplomacy as well as the means to address the economic crisis which since 2008 puts on the additional need of domestic economies to diversify and go international, in particular to the fast growing economies and Venezuela being one of them.

The ICPE has an established network to foster the economic and business relations between Venezuela, Slovenia and other ICPE Member States serving as the platform for information exchange and knowledge sharing to yield mutual benefits. It was agreed to organize one-day event this September which would bring together the Venezuelan and Slovenia business and government representatives to explore economic and investment possibilities in the areas such as industry, construction, tourism, health, technology and innovation where Slovenia has an explicit expertise and know-how.