“One of the issues that weaken us and that has been making it impossible for us to expand trade among ourselves (is foreign currency) (…),” said the dignitary on Wednesday during the anti-inflationary forum convened by his Mexican counterpart, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Arce added that the obstacle is the availability of currency, “which we have to pay more of, for the foreign debt than the interest rate abroad.”

On this basis, he considered that “this issue of payments in national currency, swaps (currency exchange), as Argentina does with China, and other types of payments that comrade Lula has also proposed in his campaign, to have a common currency, are the issues that we must deepen so as to advance at a greater speed in trade between us”.

The Bolivian head of state advocated generating exchanges of agricultural technology to strengthen productive capacity and reduce the cost of food, much more expensive due to the war between Russia and Ukraine and to the thousands of reprisals applied by the United States and its allies against Moscow.

He also mentioned the exchange of agricultural technology and knowledge on the subject, currently maintained between Bolivia and Cuba.

Arce intervened in the virtual forum in which his counterparts from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Honduras and Mexico participated, as well as authorities from Belize, Ecuador, Venezuela and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

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