Sergio Massa met the Chinese ambassador: he asked him to reverse the trade deficit and expand the currency swap

Sergio Massa received the ambassador of the People’s Republic of China, Zou Xiaoli, on Friday. The meeting was held at the Ministry of Economy, where Massa currently leads the Production and Agriculture portfolios.

They talked about the voluminous bilateral relationship and pending work, while Massa asked the Chinese representative to find mechanisms that reverse Argentina’s strong trade deficit with the Asian titan.

The deficit in the first half of this year alone was 5,841 million dollars, more than all of 2021

Massa raised with Ambassador Zou the idea that both countries are trying to issue some sort of yuan bond used for bilateral exchange. And he talked to him too, as this newspaper learned of Argentina’s request for exchange extension of currencies established by both countries – an equivalent to 20.477 million dollars in January of this year.

Argentina uses this currency exchange in a particular way to increase the Central Bank’s meager reserves. President Alberto Fernández told Congress on March 1 that China has agreed to expand it. And that would reach more than $ 23 billionalthough they are not currencies that can be used in the international market but rather in bilateral exchanges.

Days ago, the president of the Central Bank, Miguel Pesce He sowed doubts by saying that he was already “active”, which would demonstrate the critical situation of the national coffers.

Ambassador Zou had given an interview to the national media last Tuesday and expressed himself in it Clarione That he wanted to meet the new minister, whom he had met as Speaker of the House. Massa was in China in 2017 but is known for his fluid ties to UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. After all, this week he met with Ambassador Marc Stanley.

The meeting took place this Friday and Zou was accompanied by the commercial advisor of the Chinese embassy in Buenos Aires, while Massa was accompanied by the Argentine ambassador, Gustavo Martínez Pandiani.

The Chinese embassy has not yet released the details of the interview with Massa-Zou. The Chinese diplomat had said so Clarione who wanted to get on with the construction projects set by presidents Xi Jinping and Alberto Fernández, in their various talks, but also to respect the map outlined by the announcement Silk Road, which Argentina joined in February.

Among these, some generate controversy such as the Santa Cruz hydroelectric dams, or that of nuclear power plant in the province of Buenos Aires. However, others are very important for local reactivation, such as railways or mines.

Zou and Massa “have pledged to continue working for deepen the financial linkencourage the arrival of greater investments in strategic sectors such as banking, mining, hydrocarbons, renewable energy, services, infrastructure and communications, as well as accelerate the opening of markets so that more products from Argentina’s regional economies are marketed in China “, they indicated the spokespersons of the Minister of Economy, Production and Agriculture.

And they stressed that “while agreeing on the significant increase in trade in the last 50 years (in the last three years bilateral trade has reached an average of 15,000 million dollars), the Minister stressed the need for find a balance in the trade balancel – in favor of China – as a suspended and central point of the bilateral agenda “.

This was a way of asking China for something to reverse the trade deficit that Zou told reporters this week is rooted in the “different manufacturing structures of the two countries.” On Thursday it was reported that the ambassador to Beijing, Sabino Vaca Narvaja, has agreed with the governor of Shaanxi province, Zhao Yide, an investment of $ 1,250 million in a fertilizer plant in Tierra del Fuego.

This Friday they talked about Argentina’s strategic availability of energy, protein, critical minerals and human resources as key resources for increasing sales of Argentina’s added value to China. The problem, as critics say, is that even if China wants to buy, The Argentines have not generated production capacity available in their economic structure for such a level of export.

“Ambassador Zou told Massa that there is a growing Chinese middle class in his country, amounting to more than 500 million people, who are very interested in importing quality Argentine products.”