|
 Brazil and Argentina ratified their "strategic alliance" on Monday during a business seminar opened by Presidents Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner from Argentina and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from Brazil, in the Argentinean capital Buenos Aires.
"Argentina and Brazil must not see each other as competitors," said the Brazilian president on a brief visit to Argentina together with 250 businessmen from his country's leading corporations.
"Argentina-Brazil: A key productive alliance," was the logo of the seminar which convened Argentina's Industrial Union and Brazil's São Paulo Federation of Industries, the two countries main and most powerful industrial lobbies.
President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner said both countries are going through "a very special moment of history" and praised what she described as "an unparalleled communion in the joint history of Argentina and Brazil"
Lula addressed the Argentine president as "my dear friend Cristina" and said both countries are going "through an exceptional moment" and called on the business communities of both countries to consolidate and strengthen trade and investment links.
"Brazil is the leading investor in Argentina; Brazilian corporations are committed to Argentina. That is why with President Cristina we are planning measures to ensure this virtuous relation with the creation of a sovereign fund and multiplying efforts to eliminate trade barriers to exports in the world," said Lula.
The Brazilian leader's words were also an elliptical reference to the recent Doha round talks in Geneva where a last minute agreement, patiently elaborated and accepted by Brazil on farm import safeguards, was finally frustrated by intransigence from the US and India and to everybody's surprise was supported by Argentina, making it a major embarrassment for the Mercosur block alleged unity.
The seminar was followed by sector rounds including automobiles, auto parts, capital goods, farm machinery, shoe-wear, ship building, software, chemical and petrochemical, oil and gas, public works, textiles, tourism, food, beverage, Biofuels, wood and furniture.
The purpose of the seminar is to agree on sector cooperation, production integration and developing added value to stimulate competitiveness in international markets.
New Markets
Presidents Lula and Hugo Chavez from Venezuela arrived Sunday night in Buenos Aires to meet President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and discuss pending issues, such as trade relations between the three countries.
Brazil and Argentina have a strong bilateral trade and the two have developed a confluence of interests in foreign policy and trade affairs, both in Mercosur and in the international arena.
Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana said that the Brazilian visit had a business focus, "because one of the goals is to acquire enhanced know-how and to agree on common business initiatives."
Taiana highlighted that this is a "continuation" of previous activities since "we already attended meetings (with businessmen) in Brazil and, on this occasion, the event is encouraged by Lula's visit."
The president of the Argentine Industrial Union, UIA, Juan Carlos Lascurián and FIESP (Sao Paulo's Industrial Federation), Brazil's industrial lobby boss Paulo Skap gave a speech Monday at a seminar on "Argentina-Brazil: a key productive alliance," which aims at developing bilateral businesses.
A communiqué issued on Saturday by the Industrial Union of the Province of Buenos Aires, UIPBA, said that their meeting with Brazilian businessmen aims at "conquering new markets, attracting specific investment projects and also achieving cooperation agreements."
Mercopress
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The only good thing to say about the visit to Brazil of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Monday November 23, is that it was mercifully short and lasted less than 24 hours. Ahmadinejad had his picture taken being hugged by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who gave him a warm welcome and said Iran had every right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj).
Such as automotives trade in the Mercosur, where Brazil can export 2,5 times more to Argentina that argentina can export to Brazil.
Is there a free trade in Mercosur ? Of course not ! Brazil always intend to make it more a one way trade than reciprocal trade....one way or the other, at whatever arrogance and cheatings are necessary.
Another simple example was in 2005 and 2006 with the rice trade in Mercosur. The agreements is that rice can be exported/imported freely within the Mercosur.
Wellllll, Brazil decided unilaterally.....to refuse the Uruguay rice deliveries, because the price was below the Brazilian price and your farmers complained about the "UNFAIR" competition !!!
So is Brazil.
Could anyone prove me wrong ? I dream someone does it with facts not lies !!!!