08/27/2023 – 20:04
The Minister of Economy of Argentina, Sergio Massa, who is running for president as the government’s candidate Alberto Fernández in the October elections, should arrive this Monday, 28, in Brasília, for a meeting with Fernando Haddad and with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The visit was mentioned in a tweet by the minister of the government’s Secretariat for Social Communication, Paulo Pimenta, and confirmed by members of the government.
The expectation is that Massa’s agenda in Brazil will focus on economic issues, hence the priority agenda with Haddad. But there is a forecast that the Argentine will also meet with Lula at the Planalto Palace. The Argentine comes to thank Lula for his support for his neighbor’s entry into the Brics, expanded last week, at a summit meeting in South Africa.
Massa represents Peronism in the Argentine election. The race is led by the libertarian Javier Milei, considered the “Argentine Bolsonaro” by analysts in the neighboring country for selling himself as an outsider of politics against the failure of public power in the face of serious economic problems.
Even so, the Brazilian government tries to avoid explicit nods to the election in the neighboring country, as Jair Bolsonaro did when defending the vote against Alberto Fernández in 2019. However, the simple appearance alongside Lula in the middle of the electoral campaign – the election is October 22 – is a valuable asset for the Peronist candidate.
Massa is also coming to Brazil to discuss the possibility of adopting yuan as a guarantee in Brazil-Argentina bilateral trade, as well as investments in gas pipelines to serve the Brazilian market. At the Brics meeting, Lula again defended the use of currencies other than the dollar in trade between the group’s countries.
Argentina was invited to join the Brics and the current Peronist government is interested in the initiative. The opposition, on the other hand, has already signaled that adhesion should not occur in case of victory and has used the negative as an element of the electoral campaign.
With a shortage of reserves in dollars, Argentina has again limited purchases from Brazil, due to lack of currency to honor payments, which is why the topic is also of interest to Brazil. The Lula government is negotiating with Argentina a system of guarantees in yuan to provide security for Brazilian exporters who sell to their neighbor.
But there are other economic interests at stake in the current relationship between the two countries, such as the Argentine proposal to extend the Norte and Néstor Kirchner gas pipelines to export natural gas to Brazil, with BNDES financing support for Brazilian companies participating in the undertaking.
On Saturday, the 25th, Massa was in Córdoba, in the center-north of the country, to launch the tender for a stretch of works. According to him, the project “will generate annual savings of US$ 1.96 billion and export gas to countries in the region”.
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