In the context of the arrival of the presidents and guests to the summit of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez announced that he will submit the proposal of his Ecuadorian counterpart Rafael Correa to create a new currency area. Chávez said that it is useless to wait for others to solve the problems caused by the financial crisis in Latin America.

"We are going to create a monetary area in the ALBA. We are not going to wait, just sitting around, that the so-called International Monetary Fund and the World Bank come to solve our problems, especially the great threat to the world that has been unleashed, that is the great crisis of the century, the economic, financial and food crisis," said Chávez.