Election looming, Chavez brings $2 billion to old, poor

President Hugo Chavez on Tuesday unveiled a massive new social spending spree, delivering $2 billion to the elderly poor just in 2012, when he will seek reelection for a third six-year term. The new pension outlays follow his announcement last month of another $2.3 billion in 2012 alone on subsidies for poor Venezuelans unrelated to age. "We are talking about $2 billion for just one year," Chavez said of the newer plan, in an address to hundreds of elderly people dubbed "Mission: Love for Seniors." The plan is meant to help retirees living in homes for impoverished seniors, at least 400,000 in the near term, said Chavez, a leftist ex-paratrooper who has been in power in this country of 28 million people since 1999. Earlier Tuesday, Chavez also announced Venezuela has reached agreement with a Chinese bank for a $4 billion dollar loan to finance housing construction in the South American country, with vast oil resources and oil income. The pension outlays will start in January, Chavez said. Retirees including mothers, artists, former sportsmen and fishermen will be among the many eligible for the monthly payment equivalent to the official national monthly minimum wage (about 360 dollars). A staunch critic of the United States, Chavez is the key political and economic ally of Cuba, the Americas' only one-party communist regime. He also has launched economic support programs for sympathetic governments across Latin America.