- January 5, 2022
- Posted by: medium
- Category: National
The omicron variant disrupted negotiations and face-to-face meetings with Mexico and the United States.
For the first month of 2022, several actions related to the country's foreign trade are planned, among which the presentation of a draft Investment Promotion Law, the resumption of face-to-face negotiations for a trade agreement with Mexico, the meeting of theTrade and Investment Councilbetween Ecuador and the United States in search of a second phase agreement, among others.
This was highlighted this Wednesday, during a radio interview,Julio Jose Prado, Minister of Production, Foreign Trade, Investments and Fisheries, who assured that by the end of this month it will be delivered to the President of the Republic,Guillermo Lasso, the projectInvestment Promotion Law, on which the State portfolio has worked in the last months of 2021 and whose basis was the Creating Opportunities project.
Prado explained that the project contains two bodies. The first is related to the issues of public-private alliances, where reforms have been carried out so that the Secretariat of Public-Private Alliances, in coordination with the Ministry and the Vice Ministry of Investments, have all the facilities to attract more investments towards public projects. .
“We have a catalog of a large number of projects available to investors that require some legal reforms to be faster and more interesting for local and international investment,” said Prado.
Meanwhile, the second body of the project contains reforms to the Free Zone Law.
“We believe that one capacity that Ecuador has to attract massive investment is to generate a new free zone scheme; more modern, more open and with a very important condition: that the investment or the creation of a free zone does not depend on the will of a bureaucrat or the politician on duty; and that they are only paper free zones, but that they are living free zones that have an economic project behind them, a business credit," explained Minister Prado, who revealed that they have taken as a basis the best practices of the free zones of Uruguay, Colombia and Costa Rica.
Regarding the meeting with the Trade and Investment Council (TIC) scheduled for this month, Prado revealed that the United States Department of Foreign Trade requested on Tuesday that the meeting be postponed for two weeks due to the omicron variant.
However, Prado confirmed that the meeting will be in Ecuador. “There is not going to be a change that we have to travel to Washington. We believed that it was very important that it be here to demonstrate the progress and that they also see our predisposition, with which this committee is going to happen; It has simply been delayed, perhaps a couple of weeks,” said the minister.
Another negotiation process that the omicron variant disrupted was the trade agreement with Mexico, which was scheduled to be closed at the end of 2021.
Prado pointed out that due to the Omicron variant, several of the planned in-person negotiations were closed. One of them, which was agreed between him and the Minister of Commerce and Economy of Mexico at a forum of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Switzerland, was suspended at the beginning of December.
However, the minister assured that negotiations have been resumed virtually, although he acknowledged that it is a much slower process than it could be in person; Although he announced that, from January 15 onwards, Ecuador's negotiating team, headed by him and the Vice Minister of Foreign Trade, Daniel Legarda, is expected to travel to Mexico for the last or penultimate round of face-to-face negotiation of the trade agreement with that country. country.
He revealed that there are pending issues, such as access to markets.
On the side of Mexico towards Ecuador, he indicated that Mexico still has in its basket of undefined issues related to various products in the negotiation, such as bananas, coffee, cocoa and shrimp; while on the Ecuadorian side they have issues to be defined in terms of industrial products, especially manufacturing issues.
He highlighted, for example, the issue of shrimp, in which there is significant sensitivity in northern Mexico, although he assured that the negotiating team is working so that these exports from Ecuador can be released within the negotiation agreement.
Finally, Prado hopes that official talks for a trade agreement with China will begin by the middle or end of that year, after a presidential trip that is planned to that country, although confirmation of the date will depend on the progress of the variant. omicron.
“We have been working in recent months on an internal analysis, which we are also coordinating with the counterpart, China, to be able to carry out a sensitivity analysis. It is the first part that has to be: work on good negotiation practices (and) sensitivity analysis in Ecuador,” specified Prado, who announced that the next part will be the signing of the terms of reference, which is expected to be the beginning of a formal negotiation.