CAN – China business possibilities to be probed

Lima, May 23. A delegation of Chinese businessmen will be touring Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela starting this week to promote economic and trade relations with the Andean Community (CAN) countries.

On Thursday, May 25, the Chinese businessmen will take part in the Peruvian capital in the seminar "CAN/China Business Opportunities," organized by the CAN General Secretariat, and in Bilateral Business Meetings sponsored by the Lima Chamber of Commerce and Peru’s Foreign Ministry.

At the seminar, speakers for the two parties will talk about the economic environment and the trade situation of the CAN countries and of China, together with the respective advantages and potentials of their markets.

Liu Wenjie, Vice-chairman of the Chinese Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT), the organization sponsoring the mission, heads the visiting delegation consisting of 35 Beijing businessmen working in different production and commercial sectors.

On March 30^th of this year, CAN and China signed an agreement setting up a Mechanism for Political Consultation and Cooperation aimed at deepening, strengthening, and diversifying the ties of friendship, understanding and cooperation and trade, investment, and cultural relations between the two parties.

Over the 1990-1999 period, trade between the two regions amounted to close to 6 billion dollars (US$ 5,984,000,000), of which Andean exports to China represented almost 3.2 billion dollars (US$ 3,197,000,000) and imports from that market accounted for somewhat less than 2.8 billion dollars (US$ 2,787,000,000).

Throughout this period, although China was a relatively unimportant trading partner in terms of Andean worldwide imports and exports, with only 0.9 percent of the total, the growth in sales to that country averaged 20 percent, and of purchases from it, 41 percent.

For the region, the difference between accrued exports and imports during 1990-1999 yielded a positive 410 million dollars, but over the last two years CAN has run a negative balance of trade of 250 and 238 million dollars, respectively.

The Chinese businessmen are interesting in buying goods like aluminum, copper wire and cable, lumber, coffee, fish oil, iron ore, steel, fertilizers, cereals, and chemical products from the CAN and in marketing traditional medicinal products, synthetic fabrics, toys, cereal processing machinery, metal structures, uranium products, tools, automobiles, motorcycles, and clocks and watches, among other things, in the Andean countries.