Here are two examples of countertrade, where deals in the millions, sometimes in the hundreds of millions, occur around the globe.


Thai Government Will Barter Fruit For Buses

A top-level Thai government delegation has held talks with a major Chinese bus manufacturer, Jing Long, regarding a barter transaction which will see Thai fruits traded for Chinese-made locomotives, passenger buses, and armored cars.

The meetings between top government officials was aimed at strengthening relations between the two countries and to focus on the future where bilateral trade is expected to reach $49 billion annually by 2010.

Barbados Bartering Agricultural Commodities For Oil

The Venezuelan government will accept sugar from Barbados and bananas from St. Lucian in exchange for oil, which could represent a possible saving of the Barbados sugar industry.


In the PetroCaribe Oil Agreement, Venezuela has pledged “to take our oil reserves and use them to ensure that all of our neighbors are not held hostage by the international capitalist class that is pushing up world oil prices and (thus causing us to) fall victim to the subversion of their economies because of high fuel prices.”

The PetroCaribe agreement had been designed to come to the rescue of countries facing the shock of losing their preferential markets as well as higher international tariffs for their sugar and bananas.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 21st, 2007 at 10:35 am and is filed under Global Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.