Latam leftists to meet on new regional currency

Latam leftists to meet on new regional currency
(AFP

CARACAS — Venezuela and leftist allies will meet Monday in Caracas to
fine tune a new regional currency to break the "dependency on the (US)
dollar," President Hugo Chavez said Saturday.

"On Monday... we'll have a very important meeting of economy ministers
from ALBA to further shape an extraordinary project" on a currency that
will "break the dependency on the dollar, its economic and financial
colonialism," Chavez told a political rally.

The new currency, named the Sucre after Jose Antonio de Sucre, who
fought for independence from Spain alongside Venezuelan hero Simon
Bolivar in the early 19th century, is expected to be rolled out early
this year in a non-paper form.

The currency for regional trade was agreed to in an October meeting of ALBA.

That move echoes the European Union's introduction of the euro
precursor, the ECU, an account unit designed to tie down stable exchange
rates between member states before the national currencies were scrapped.

ALBA was founded in 2004 by Venezuela and Cuba as a counterweight to the
Free Trade Area of the Americas that the United States and several Latin
American nations were proposing at the time.

ALBA's member states are Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua,
Honduras, Dominica, Saint Vincent and Antigua and Barbuda.

AFP: Latam leftists to meet on new regional currency (24 January 2010)
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