The ruler of Ecuador was received by the host president and his wife, Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller, at the official residence.
“The meeting was productive and the meeting with the president of Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso, and his wife, María de Lourdes Alcívar Crespo, was pleasant,” added the Mexican president.
An honor guard interpreted the national anthems of both countries in the central courtyard of the historic building, where the leaders later held a private meeting.
“Thank you very much for the invitation, President. Ecuador and Mexico share a history that unites them, that is why they will always be sister nations,” Lasso wrote on the same social network.
COMMERCIAL NEGOTIATION
Before the meeting, the Ecuadorian president announced that the meeting would advance “the negotiation process of the Free Trade Agreement.”
The visit was scheduled so that the South American ruler was a guest of honor at the Summit of the Pacific Alliance, of which his country has been an associate member since 2019, where formal entry was planned.
The appointment was suspended after the Congress of Peru denied the departure of the country to the president Pedro Castillo, who was going to receive the temporary presidency of the organization, and the leaders are analyzing an alternative for that ceremony.
Since 2019, Ecuador is an Associate State of the regional group, founded in 2011 by Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, focused on free trade and regional economic cooperation.
The incorporation process contemplates that the Andean country has commercial agreements with the members of the alliance, and must complete this step with Mexico.
The subjects that are negotiated are: access to markets, rules of origin, sustainable fishing, commercial defense and institutional matters regarding services and investment.
Ecuador exported US$168 million to Mexico in 2021, mainly cocoa, canned fish and metal manufactures. The Ecuadorian unions ask that shrimp and banana have good conditions in the trade agreement, while their Mexican counterparts ask to protect those sectors.
The two products mentioned are on the list of the 10 main export items of Ecuador, which is the largest seller of bananas and in 2019 covered a quarter of the world market.
The Pacific Alliance will grow with new members, such as Ecuador, Costa Rica and Honduras, and has expanded its plans since the 2018 Puerto Vallarta Summit, when it signed an agreement with the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) for the first time, which is made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.
With 50 economic cooperation projects, the number of observer countries in the group grew to 55 and four more trading powers began to become “associated states”: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Singapore.
With information from Sputnik