MONTERREY, Mexico – Mexican cement giant Cemex is open to talks to resolve a dispute with the Venezuelan government, which nationalized the multinational’s operations in the Andean nation last year, the company said.

“We’ve begun an arbitration process in an international court. However, we maintain our willingness to negotiate with the government outside of the arbitration process,” Hector Medina, Cemex’s executive VP of finance and legal, told a press conference on Wednesday.

In late October 2008, Monterrey, Mexico-based Cemex filed an arbitration claim before the World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes, a process that could last several years.

The world’s third-largest cement maker in terms of production capacity is demanding around $1.3 billion in compensation for assets that leftist President Hugo Chavez seized by decree in mid-2008, part of a nationalization drive that also affected two other foreign firms.

That amount is deemed exorbitantly high by the Venezuela’s socialist government, which seized control of the sector as part of its plans to build much-needed housing for the poor and has only offered $650 million.

“Any initiative (to achieve a solution) is up to the government of Venezuela,” Medina said.

Cemex on Tuesday announced a 71 percent drop in net profit for the first nine months of the year.

With respect to those recent results, Medina predicted sales in the United States, its biggest market, will recover in mid-2010 thanks to the Obama administration’s infrastructure spending plans.

The contracts have not been finalized, but that should happen “in the first part of 2010,” Medina said.

Prior to the nationalization, Cemex, founded in Mexico in 1906, accounted for 52 percent of Venezuela’s total cement output, provided jobs to more than 3,000 people and its sales in that country represented around three percent of its global revenue.

In July, the Chavez government announced the formal takeover of Switzerland’s Holcim and France’s Lafarge, the other two large foreign cement companies affected by the nationalization of the sector.

Lafarge reached a deal with Venezuela that prices its nationalized assets at roughly $250 million, while Holcim rejected Caracas’ offer and also has filed for international arbitration. EFE