In a colloquium in this capital, the Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism of Spain, Reyes Maroto, referred to her country’s efforts to strengthen cooperation ties and its commitment expressed in an investment of more than 172 billion euros in Latin America and the Caribbean.
“We have contributed to alleviating the pandemic with donations of vaccines, encouraged agreements on education and we believe in the need to diversify our agendas to accelerate agreements that allow reducing the inequality and poverty gaps in that region,” said Maroto.
The minister valued the work in favor of free trade agreements in which Spain deepens with Argentina, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica or Chile, the desire to unlock an agreement between the European Union (EU) and Mercosur and the definitive commitment for tourism.
Andrés Allamand, head of the Ibero-American General Secretariat (Segib), Gema Sacristán, general business director of IDB Invest, and Núria Vilanova, president of Ceapi (Alliance Business Council for Ibero-America), also analyzed the dynamics on the horizon of the economy and trade in the group.
In the deliberations called “Why Ibero-America”, a report presented by Ceapi stressed that it is an area with very close roots in history and culture, a bicontinental American and European space of countries with Spanish and Portuguese languages.
The report pointed out that this region represents nine percent of the world’s population, occupies four percent of the planet’s surface and has an approximate weight of 8.0 percent of the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
In Latin America, 327 million people speak Spanish and 214 million Portuguese. Most of its countries are considered high and middle income, and have medium-high levels of social development, measured by the Human Development Index (HDI).
Ceapi recalled that the pandemic hit Ibero-America hard, which registers 32 percent of deaths due to Covid-19, with a considerable economic impact.
In the case of Latin America and the Caribbean, the main impacts of the pandemic were the fall in exports, capital flight, the collapse of tourism, the fall in remittances, economic contraction and unemployment.
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