The national government is betting on direct investments with Southeast Asian countries

Arreaza said that Nicolás Maduro’s government has formally requested that Venezuela become a party to the ASEAN Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation “to have a much closer and more productive relationship”.

Venezuela asked the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) this Thursday 26-N to establish direct relationships that allow for new investments, just as the South American country is dragging a five-year economic contraction.

Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza said Nicolás Maduro’s government has formally requested that Venezuela become part of the ASEAN Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation “to have a much closer and more productive relationship”.

“We want to open a great alliance with ASEAN countries, where we do not have to depend on third parties and we can work directly on investments,” said the foreign minister during his participation in an online meeting with representatives of that bloc.

Arreaza thanked the nations of Southeast Asia for their role in “consolidating a multipolar world”, stressing that multipolarism “can bring about the balance of this world that is in transition”.

“Asean has several decades teaching the world a type of cooperative and constructive integration, which started with political cooperation and then progressed towards economic integration to address major challenges,” he said.

The minister remarked that Venezuela “is a country under siege”, alluding to the international sanctions that have been imposed on it in recent years and which, according to the Executive, are more than 300 only those coming from the United States.

With these financial restrictions, he said, they “tried to economically hang” Venezuela.

For this reason “we have opened great alliances with countries and we want to do so with ASEAN”, he said after reiterating Venezuela’s commitment to “strengthen” “ties and ties” with ASEAN member states.

“In the cultural field we know the richness of that region, even in our America the cultural richness is immense, we have many elements in common”, he added.

Asean is a multilateral body founded in 1967 and made up of Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.

In the last quarter of the year, Venezuela embarked on an intense search for international investments with which it hopes to evade economic sanctions and improve living conditions in the country, where 96% are in poverty according to non-governmental organizations.