Ecuador’s President Lasso travels to Mexico in search of free trade agreement

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The president of Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso, traveled to Mexico on Monday (23) for an official visit, in which he will seek to advance in his plan to conclude a free trade agreement with that nation.

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In brief statements at the airport before he departed, Lasso detailed that tomorrow he will participate in the commemorative act for the 200th anniversary of the signing of the Treaties of Cordoba, in which Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will also be present.

“Tomorrow, we will be in Cordoba, Veracruz, to celebrate the 200 years of Mexican Independence, I have been invited by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador with whom I will have a working meeting,” said the chief executive.

Lasso added that he would raise “the free trade agreement between Mexico and Ecuador so that, in the shortest possible time,” Ecuador can join the Pacific Alliance with full rights.

The trip, which will last until next Thursday, takes place at a time when Ecuador is waiting for a response from Mexico to return to the negotiating table, since the long-awaited path to the Pacific Alliance depends on it, after the return of the Andean country to the mechanism of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).

In a recent interview with Efe, the Minister of Production and Foreign Trade, Julio José Prado, considered the negotiation with Mexico “key”, and said he hoped that, once the stumbling block was resolved, Ecuador expected a return to the negotiating table “within the next few weeks, at the latest months”.

“The route we have to follow to open Ecuador to the world (begins with) Mexico and the Pacific Alliance. Mexico is a stepping stone to the Alliance, but it is also essential to get there without tariffs, because it is the main private investor in Ecuador,” Prado said at the time.

The negotiations are pending eleven negotiating tables that have to do with market access (the issue of tariffs), intellectual property, financial issues, investments, and other types such as rules of origin and others.

According to the Presidency of Ecuador, Lasso is scheduled to meet with the Mexican Business Council for Foreign Trade, Investment, and Technology (Comce).

The delegation accompanying Lasso includes Prado and the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Mauricio Montalvo, and Telecommunications and Information Society, María Maino Isaías.

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