The Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro, hailed Iran’s cooperation in his country’s national housing scheme - the Great Housing Mission project, FNA reported yesterday. During his speech in the opening ceremony of one of the housing schemes in Lara province on Friday, Maduro named Iran as one of Venezuela’s major trading partners and announced that he will meet President Hassan Rouhani in the near future to investigate avenues of further bilateral transactions. Venezuela had previously called for Iran’s help to develop its construction materials production industry and construct 3 million homes in the Latin American country. Caracas plans to build 500,000 houses per year on average and construct 3 million residential units before 2020. The Great Housing Mission project - a government-funded program – was launched in 2011 by the government of former president Hugo Chavez to address the country’s severe housing shortage with the construction of 3 million homes by 2019. Iran, Russia, China and Belarus participated in the project, with around 600,000 low-income Venezuelan families applying to receive houses.
