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July 22, 2022
New report on business opportunities for Argentina with China
On Thursday, July 21, the “Opportunities and Business with China” Report, prepared by the Argentine-Chinese Chamber of Production, Industry and Commerce, was presented at the Palacio San Martín. The event was headed by the Undersecretary for Trade and Investment Promotion, Pablo Sívori, and was attended by the President of the Argentine-Chinese Chamber, Sergio Spadone.

During the meeting, Sívori thanked the Chamber for its work in preparing the Report, as well as its participation in the Public-Private Council for the Promotion of Exports (CPPPE) that works in the orbit of this Foreign Ministry. The CPPPE brings together 374 chambers and private sector entities belonging to 76 export complexes, with which it works together to define an international insertion strategy and design a Trade Promotion Plan with specific actions to be carried out in each of the markets. of interest. At the same time, the Council articulates a working table with the Binational Chambers, who feed the work of each of the sectoral tables with their commercial intelligence, and thus collaborate with the task of defining the target markets and commercial promotion actions.

Sívori considered the report presented as a fundamental input when thinking about Argentina's trade promotion strategy in China. He also stressed that bilateral trade with China has grown at a fast pace over the past 20 years. However, China's global imports evolved at a higher rate than our country's sales to its market: if in 2002 Argentine exports represented 0.5% of Chinese global imports, in 2021 this magnitude became 0, 25%.

On the other hand, statistics show that the products that Argentina offers are increasingly in demand by China. The main products exported by Argentina to China have an increasing weight in its global imports: in the last 20 years, these products went from representing 7% of total Chinese imports to 15%. This is in line with the growth in global demand for food from China: the 15 main foods imported by the Asian country went from representing 2.5% to 5% of total Chinese imports in the same period.

All this indicates that there is potential to continue increasing the presence of our products in that country, facing the challenge of continuing to make the export basket more complex and adding more value to each product exported.

For his part, the president of the Argentine-Chinese Chamber, Sergio Spadone, stressed that Argentina has enormous potential to reverse the trade deficit with the Asian country. To do this, he highlighted the need to continue deepening the work done, to learn in depth the new demands of Chinese consumers in terms of traceability, safety and product design.

The event continued with a segment of technical presentations for each chapter of the Report "Opportunities and Business with China" prepared by the Chamber. The panel was made up of Germán Iturriza, Exports Chief of Grupo Los Grobo, who spoke about the relationship with China in the field of agribusiness; Fernando Fazzolari, coordinator of the report's chapter on energy, mining and infrastructure; Miguel Paissanidis, coordinator of the chapter on telecommunications and technology; Mag. Du Xiaolin, coordinator of the chapter on tourism; and Alejandra Conconi, coordinator of the chapter on Argentine Country Brand in China.

Agriculture

Among all the topics exposed at the launch of the research, emphasis was placed on the commercialization of proteins, as is the case of sorghum, a product that managed to enter China when, in the midst of the global economic crisis of 2008, the United States had a significant decline in the same production. As a consequence, China sought out Argentina and thus the doors to the market were opened.

"The production of sorghum has been on the rise," said Germán Iturriza, "as well as the barley that managed to export one million 200 thousand tons to China this last year," something that the Argentine-Chinese Chamber maintains "should be the floor to make progress."

The Report was shared digitally in 2021 and published in 2022. The book's content is available in two languages ​​(Spanish and Chinese) and can be downloaded for free from www.argenchina.org/informes.

Automatic translation from spanish.

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