The president of the Inter-American Development Bank (BID), Mauricio Claver-Carone, warned this Thursday against the Chinese penetration in Latin America, estimating that the region should not go from “the era of Odebrecht to the era of Chinese companies.”
The problem would be “that the region goes from the era of Odebrecht to the era of Chinese companies,” Claver-Carone told AFP in an interview in Madrid, alluding to the Brazilian company that left a trail of bribes that caused an earthquake. politician in the region.
“Chinese companies have distorted the markets. Why? Because they are state-subsidized companies and, frankly, they are companies without integrity standards,” added the head of the international financial organization.
“It is the concern about how” these companies “affect an ecosystem that already has too many problems, bureaucratic, corruption, transparency etc … It is like a perfect storm,” he deepened.
In the last 20 years, China it strongly gained ground against the United States in the Americas region, becoming the first commercial partner of almost all South American countries, granting low-interest loans, and investing in energy projects, ports and highways, among many works.
China represents 12% of exports and 18% of imports of all Latin America and the Caribbean, according to a report by the Paris-based think tank BSI Economics. Between 2004 and 2019, the region’s exports and imports compared to China increased by 10 and 8, respectively, according to the same source.
“An equal field for all”
Although the BID Headquartered in Washington, Claver-Carone became the first American to head the entity a year ago, the first lender in Latin America and the Caribbean, at the proposal of the Donald Trump government.
Claver-Carone, born in Miami and with Cuban roots, does not say against Chinese companies settling in Latin America, but asks “that they do so under a transparent framework and on an equal field for all.”
As the first financial partner in the region, the BID “It seeks investments in the region that can create sustained, inclusive, long-term growth, and the best companies to do so are American, European, Japanese, Korean companies, etc …”
He assures that in the past some of the companies in those countries could ignore these criteria in Latin America, “but today we are in a framework where the business world has progressed a lot, it has other standards.”
Claver-Carone attributes part of the blame for the supply problem that currently affects world trade to the fact that much of the production was based on China, and believes that a decentralization is necessary that could benefit Latin America.
Thus, he explained, if Latin America and the Caribbean were made with 10% of Chinese exports to the United States of those products that they also export to the North American country, an additional “$ 72 billion” would arrive in the region, “a transformative amount.” .
The president also demanded that his institution be endowed with greater financing capacity, and when he became president he set the goal of going from 11,000 to 23,000 million dollars annually.
“We are not going to be able to carry out tomorrow’s missions with yesterday’s resources. So we have to strengthen” the IDB, he explained.
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Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx