Caracas.- Dominican president Leonel Fernández praised the Petrocaribe accord yesterday, before leaving Venezuela on his way to Mexico on an official visit.

During the Third Petrocaribe summit in the Venezuelan capital, Fernandez listed the benefits Petrocaribe had brought to the Dominican Republic.

The president spoke of the volatility of international oil prices and said that in this context, the beneficial terms under which Venezuela supplies oil to the Dominican Republic under Petrocaribe had enabled his country to invest the money saved by not having to buy oil on the world market into programs aimed at improving power supplies to the Dominican public.

“The Dominican problem in the last few decades has been the electrical system, due to a financing problem, so the Petrocaribe program has helped sustain a subsidy in the electrical sector, to give us relief so that we can change the type of fuel we use for generating electricity, from diesel or fuel oil to natural gas", said Fernandez.