Uruguay and China begin formal negotiations for a free trade agreement

Uruguay and China have formally started negotiations for a free trade agreement between the two countries, Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou said at a press conference on Wednesday, adding that representatives of both countries will meet in the coming days.

“The agreements suppose prosperity, opportunities and work. Our vigilance since the beginning of the government is to try to sell, to trade the products, the raw material, the industrialized and the technology of our country”, indicated Lacalle Pou.

“Since this government took office, despite the pandemic, we have had a foreign relations policy of linking with the world with a clearly open-minded vocation,” said the president.

He also stressed that the agreement reached is “beneficial for both countries” and that in the coming days the Uruguayan government teams will contact their Chinese counterparts to start talks for the FTA.

Lacalle Pou has long sought to reach an agreement of this type with China to boost exports of key products from the country such as beef. Last year the Uruguayan president expressed this interest, arousing the anger of Mercosur partners Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil.

Asked about this today, Lacalle Pou said that the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Francisco Bustillo, has already communicated with the foreign ministers or with the accredited ambassadors of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay.

“In each Mercosur summit and in each instance that we have had, we reaffirm the Uruguayan openness vocation. This does not contravene or is opposed to belonging to the bloc,” the president emphasized.

If successful, the southern country would join Chile and Peru, the other two countries in the region with unilateral free trade agreements with China, which is already Uruguay’s main trading partner.

[Con información de Reuters]

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