In an event that saw Venezuela increase its industrial capacity and move forward with its public housing program, President Hugo Chavez inaugurated a window factory in the state of Carabobo last Monday that will have the capacity to produce 860,000 units per year.

The new plant, called Guacara III, forms part of the state owned Petrochemical Corporation of Venezuela (Petrocasa) and will direct the bulk of its production to the Chavez administration’s large-scale public program, Mission Housing Venezuela, which seeks to build 3 million new homes in the country by 2019.

Monday’s inauguration was broadcast on state and private television and represents part of the socialist government’s push to increase industrial activity in the states that comprise the North Central region of Venezuela.

That push, the head of state said on Monday, will be further aided by Venezuela’s recent entrance, as a full member, into the Mercosur trade bloc.

“What great potential there is that has yet to be tapped! This factory is part of the potential that is waking up and turning this region of the country into a great industrial, scientific, and technological pole. It is one of the strongest in, not only South America, but Central America, the Caribbean and the American continent”, Chavez declared.

Such notions are not mere fantasy, the leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela told his viewers during the visit to the Guacara III’s facilities.

When Chavez first won Venezuela’s presidential election in 1998, poverty, illiteracy, and malnutrition were all trademarks of the OPEC member’s rigid class society.

Since that time, however, the Bolivarian Revolution has been able to cut poverty in half, wipe out illiteracy and reduce child malnutrition to near negligible numbers. Yet, in order to see greater economic growth, Chavez recognized on Monday the role that the private sector must play and he urged the Venezuelan business community to collaborate with government agencies in finding productive solutions for the nation.

As such, his administration has begun to create of a series of working groups that aim to establish “strategic alliances [with private firms] that will continue raising national production and convert Venezuela into a powerful player”. Meanwhile, publicly-owned firms continue to move forward in the country.

This advance was highlighted on Monday by the increased output of the staterun factory Industrias Diana, which manufactures cooking oil and other essential food products in the Carabobo capital of Valencia.

According to Food Minister Carlos Osorio, the plant, which employs 471 workers, is currently in the process of augmenting its productive capacity to one thousand tons of oil per day by the second trimester of 2013.

“We already have the equipment and we’re training personnel to get to one thousand tons daily”, the Minister informed during Monday’s transmission.

This contrasts sharply with the three tons produced daily in 2008 before the company was nationalized by the Chavez administration. Osorio reported that, with respect to the complete gamut of food commodities produced in Industrias Diana, the state operated factory is now functioning with 167 percent more output than it did before being brought into the public sector.

“These products are being directed towards satisfying the nutritional needs of all Venezuelans”, the Food Minister affirmed.

Source: MINCI via Correo del Orinoco