Economy
President Hugo Chávez announced late on Wednesday that the Venezuelan oil basket averaged some USD 74 per barrel. The ruler added that this evidences that the price of the crude oil is recovering.

He stressed said that the new price means an increase slightly lower than 3 percent, the highest in over a year.

Chávez added that the global oil price is rising as well. He also referred to the performance of the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex), where the barrel of oil exceeded USD 81.

The announcement of the Venezuelan leader was made after the Minister of Finance, Alí Rodríguez Araque, said that the closing price of oil was boosted by "the large decline of gasoline inventories and the lower increase in the inventories of crude oil," the state-run news agency Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias (ABN) reported.