Billion-dollar investment package signals increasingly close economic ties between Venezuela, Iran.
CARACAS – Venezuela has signed a deal with Iran to build over 10,000 homes in three central states of the South American nation in a billion-dollar investment package that signals the two country’s increasingly close ties.
The two governments signed the agreement on Wednesday, the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry said in a statement, without detailing how much each country would contribute to the effort that it said would benefit some 45,000 people.
The Venezuelan government in April kicked off a project to build two million homes over the next seven years, with cooperation agreements already signed with Russia, Cuba, Brazil, Argentina, China and Belarus.
Venezuela is hoping to alleviate a chronic housing shortfall — in a country with some 28.8 million inhabitants, in 2010 there were just two million homes, according to government figures.