President Alberto Fernández will receive this Monday his counterpart from Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso, in the first official visit of the president of that country to Argentina, and in which both heads of state will seek to strengthen the bilateral relationship mainly in commercial and political matters.
lasso He arrived with his entourage this Sunday at 5:00 p.m. to the Jorge Newbery Airport, in the City of Buenos Aires, where He was received by Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero.
The Ecuadorian president arrived accompanied by two of his officials: Vianna Maino, Minister of Telecommunications and the Information Society, and Julio José Prado Lucio-Paredes, Minister of Production, Foreign Trade, Investments and Fisheries, who will hold bilateral meetings with their peers. Argentines.
Within the framework of Lasso’s arrival, Cafiero stated: “We are going to be developing a very important agenda tomorrow to strengthen the bilateral bond. The meeting that is going to take place at Casa Rosada with President Alberto Fernández, and also with my colleague Juan Carlos Holguín, will have a broad agenda in the economic, political and cultural aspects.”
The visit of the head of the Carondelet Palace (headquarters of the Ecuadorian government) takes place a few days after the passage of two other South American leaders through Buenos Aires: Gabriel Boric (Chile) and Luis Arce (Bolivia), with whom Fernández strengthened ties and signed two separate bilateral agreements.
Lasso will thus concretize the delayed visit that both heads of state were due since the assumption of the Ecuadorian to the presidency of that country, in May of last year.
Fernández was unable to attend Lasso’s inauguration ceremony, but he apologized with a letter and since then he tried to travel to Quito on several occasions, but he always had to postpone that visit.
Lasso will start his official agenda on Monday at 10:30 when he makes the protocol floral offering at the Monument to the Liberator General José de San Martín, located in the square that bears the same name, in front of the Argentine Foreign Ministry.
This act will mark the beginning of the bilateral agenda that the Ecuadorian president will develop in Buenos Aires next Monday and Tuesday, in which It will be his first official visit to Argentine soil.
On Monday, after the floral offering, Lasso will go to the Casa Rosada to hold a bilateral meeting with President Fernández.
The visit of the president of Ecuador “constitutes an important advance in commercial and political matters,” sources from the San Martín Palace told Télam.
Lasso’s arrival in Buenos Aires is part of the “impulse” that Cafiero “has been printing in the Foreign Ministry in order to strengthen ties with neighboring countries and the regionas was done recently with Chile, Bolivia and Paraguay,” the sources highlighted.
One of the objectives of Lasso’s arrival in the country is “to continue to bring positions closer to the Government of Ecuador on regional and hemispheric foreign policy issues.”
As pointed out, one of the objectives of Lasso’s arrival in the country is “to continue bringing positions closer to the Government of Ecuador on regional and hemispheric foreign policy issues.”
They also indicated that, on the occasion, a cooperation agreement on consular matters will be signed.
From the San Martín Palace they announced that in the meeting that Fernández will hold with his Ecuadorian counterpart “they will exchange on the next Summit of the Americas, which will be held in June in the United States, as well as on issues related to Argentina’s Pro Tempore Presidency of the Celac”.
This will not be the first time that Fernández and Lasso have seen each other in person: both leaders met in Peru as part of the inauguration of Pedro Castillo, in July of last year, and greeted each other when they met in China during the Winter Olympics in Beijing, on February 4 last.
At that bilateral meeting in Lima, both heads of state sought to strengthen ties between Argentina and Ecuador and agreed on the need for Latin America to “become more integrated and once again constitute an area of unity.”
“We have a very common view of the need for Latin America to become more integrated and to once again constitute a unitary environment where we can discuss the problems we have,” Fernández stressed. in statements to the press, at the end of that meeting that took place at the Westin Hotel in the Peruvian capital.
On that occasion, the Argentine president also sought to shorten differences with Lasso, a former banker with a liberal economic profile, but pragmatic in terms of foreign policy.
“Even when many stop us on different sidewalks, the truth is that the differences are not that many when it comes to seeing how we achieve our objectives,” Fernández said then about his first meeting with Lasso, and advocated “respecting each other in diversity and working together for what Latin America needs, which is to achieve a space where we can discuss our destiny”.
Fernández pointed out, in this sense, that both countries have “similar problems” and mentioned the common objectives of “achieving immunity” of the nations “as soon as possible, recovering formal work and guaranteeing equal development for all.”
According to data provided by Palacio San Martín, The result of bilateral trade during 2021 showed a favorable balance for Argentina of more than 190 million dollars: exports of national products to Ecuador were more than 504 million dollars and imports of 313 million dollars.
Meanwhile, in the two-month period January-February 2022, it produced more than 125 million dollars (which means an increase of more than 207% compared to 2019) and 55 million dollars of imports, which shows a surplus balance of more than the 70 million million dollars.
Soybean meal and other residues from the food industry, cereals and vehicles are the main exported products, while imports are mainly fruits, food preparations and cocoa.
