Alberto Fernández seals deals with Brazil to finance exports for Argentina

In keeping with state visits, President Alberto Fernández wrapped up his pilgrimage to Brasília last Monday with two additional meetings: facetime with Senate chief Rodrigo Pacheco and all the nation's Supreme Court justices. The conversation with the parliamentarian ended in football chit-chat with Alberto speaking of the “great performance” of Brazil in the 1970 World Cup under Pelé, in response to Pacheco’s admiration of Lionel Messi and the Qatar World Cup final.

But what he most enjoyed, in a political sense, was knowing that his friend, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is going to “comply” with his decisions to advance the financing of exports to Argentina, which could start as from now – one way of helping a country “in problems,” according to Alberto himself. Not just that – in the next few days the tender for the Brazilian-manufactured tubing for the second leg of the Néstor Kirchner pipeline reaching Rio Grande do Sul will be held. The BNDES (Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social) development bank will put up the money, as confirmed to this journalist by Argentina’s Ambassador to Brasília, Daniel Scioli.

There are further bilateral decisions. According to Lula, “we are working on the creation of a blanket financial line because we do not want Brazil to lose imports from Argentina to other countries” – implying China – “which offer credit whereas we don’t.” Along similar lines, the Brazilian leader highlighted: “Today we are adopting an ambitious action plan to relaunch the strategic alliance,” containing over 100 resolutions.

For the veteran leftist president this is a bet within as much as beyond the domestic economic situation, concluding: “If we had to sum it up in one phrase, it would be that BNDES is back” while recalling that throughout the last four years the state bank had been absent from the business world and foreign trade. According to Brazilian government calculations, this year’s “trade could climb to US$40 billion, reaching its 2011 peak.”

Among the projects discussed were the revival of the COBEN binational nuclear energy commission, including the signature of protocols for engineering co-operation to set up atomic reactors for research purposes. The agreements celebrated, as listed in the final statement with 30 chapters, extended to collaboration in infrastructure and transport, defence, energy, mining, human rights and health.

Ambassador Scioli attached special importance to the bridge linking Santo Tomé with São Borja, whose future régime will be administered via a Unified Centre of Frontiers and Interconnected Infrastructure. In the same area a new bilateral agreement governing maritime transport is scheduled, thus boosting the connections between the two countries.