China-Uruguay：Best is Yet to Come

Ambassador: Uruguay and China, we are in a very special moment in our bilateral relations. We are approaching the celebrations of the first 30 years of diplomatic relations. 

We are assessing what we have done in the last 30 years and trying to give a new impulse to the bilateral relationship. We are working under the mandate of both President Xi Jinping and President Tabare Vazquez, who was here in China on a state visit last year. They agreed to establish Strategic Partnership. 

Our relation is going through the best moment in history while we are implementing all the different areas of the relationship with this new deep Strategic Partnership, trying to really bring together best of the two countries to make this relationship sustainable and beneficial to both peoples. In China-Uruguay relations the best is yet to come.

It is worth to mention that we are about to open the first Confucius Institute in Uruguay. Also we are working on the establishment of a cultural center of China in Uruguay. The Embassy here in Beijing hosts the culture center of Uruguay in China. 

If I may say, we are also working on preparation of the visit of President Xi Jinping to Uruguay. That would be a very important moment in the history of our bilateral relations. We really hope that could take place next year during the celebrations of the 30 years’ diplomatic relations. He visited Uruguay when he was Vice President and he left great memories to our government and our people. We are preparing ourselves to receive him again. 

The bilateral relations between Uruguay and China are by all means excellent. 

Ambassador: Uruguay is a country that has been growing up constantly in the last decade. And it’s one of the few countries in South America that continues to grow. 

The latest figures show that we are growing at 4% which is less then what we used to grow before, but still it’s an interesting number, and a much better number than some of our neighbors have. Even though the region is not going through a great time, the economy of Uruguay is still very stable. We are hoping to maintain this growth in the future, which makes sure we achieve a lot of other development in the society. 

Actually, china is a very important factor to this sustainable development in my country. Trade between our countries continues to grow. China is the first partner of Uruguay in international trade. And in recent years Uruguay’s becoming to be an interesting country for Chinese investment. We hope it also will become an interesting destination for Chinese tourists. 

 

Ambassador: It’s growing, and there’s a positive sign that more Chinese investors are coming to Uruguay identifying which areas in Uruguay are more productive for investment. 

And I think Chinese investors in Uruguay are doing very well. One area where we see clear increase is logistics. We see more Chinese companies interested in investing especially in our ports. 

This is important because we present Uruguay as a hub for distribution in South America. We were very clear to step and say we want to be part of the OBOR initiative. And we think in this context of OBOR initiative the system of free ports, free airports, and free trade zones in Uruguay, the most stable country in the region, could be an excellent base for Chinese companies to distribute goods in South America, and also to bring different goods from South America to China. 

Some Chinese are already well-established in our ports esp. the port of Montevideo, one of the most important ports in southern Atlantic Ocean. 

We also are setting some new projects of investment for new logistic areas related to fisheries and distribution of goods in South America. We have a great system of free trade zones, and one of them is about to open its branch office “Zona America” in Fo Shan, Guang Dong province in China. That will create a lot of possibilities for Latin American companies which already operate in our free trade zones. 

This is one area that we think we are very competitive and we are happy to see more Chinese companies coming. Another area we are also quite competitive is agri-business. 

As you know Uruguay has a little more than 3 million people and we have 12 million cows. Almost 50% of our beef are exported to China. In the last year we have became the first provider of beef to China, which is a lot for a small country. We are proud not only of the quantity, but esp. of the quality. 

Apart from those, fruits, dairy products, wine are also our competitive products. 

In agri-business we also received more Chinese investment in recent years. There are companies which have invested in lands in Uruguay and produce soybeans. We are now the forth exporter of soybean to China. In last year, 3 meat factories in Uruguay have been bought by Chinese companies. This is a new beginning. We are exporting most of our meat to this market and it’s very nice to see Chinese companies bringing their knowledge and characteristics of Chinese consumers to our products. 

We still see great potential to grow in agri-business. We would love to see Chinese investment in our wine, in our dairy products, fruits, etc. 

And then, there is the area of new technology. Uruguay reaches almost 100% of the production of its energy from renewable energy. And this is not a coincidence but a big investment of Uruguayan government, in hydro electrical powder at the beginning, but in the last 20 years in wind energy, biomass, a little bit less but growing in solar energy. 

This is an area we are efficient already but still open to investment. You may wonder if we are almost 100% efficient maybe we don’t need more investment. But actually we do need. Why? Because we are supporting energy to Argentina and to Brazil. So we are in a position to export clean energy. This is never common in the world. 

In technology we already have some Chinese investors, like Huawei, ZTE, in telecommunications. But I see potential also for the future in IT, software, etc. 

And in relation to new challenges and opportunities, Uruguay has a very clean matrix of energy but our cars are still consuming oil. So certain pollution is still there. Uruguay is a very clean country and we want to contribute positively to climate change. Thus the new frontier is e-vehicles. 

The city of Montevideo is thinking of e-buses. Companies from china have exported their e-cars to Uruguay. We also have a very important investment from Lifan, producer from Chongqing. They have a car factory in Uruguay which also exports cars to Brazil. We are thinking maybe the next step is to start to produce e-cars also in Uruguay for the South American market. This is something very important to underline. 

Other areas we can explore include services and tourism. Services sector is growing up fast in China and Uruguay happens to be a country of services, which ranked number 1 in our economy. There is also great potential in bringing in investment in tourism in Uruguay, Chinese hotels, restaurants, etc. 

We are working on many different areas but I think these are the sectors that we see as the most prominent ones. 

And I think for Chinese people the most important thing is that it’s a very stable society, politically, economically and socially. When we look back at the last 30 years’ history of Uruguay, all our Presidents from three different parties came to China to strengthen our friendship with China. Our policy towards China is also stable. 

Ambassador: We have a new department of investment promotion which will actively participate in many different fairs in China to promote the good business environment in Uruguay, and also to give further details regarding our investment law and incentives. 

We have an agency called Uruguay XXI which is mainly in charge of trade promotion but also of investment of the country. They are always available to not only give further details but also assist foreign investors in their arrival to the country and establishment. 

I would like to take this opportunity to invite Chinese companies to come to Uruguay to study the possibilities there. One of the best opportunities this year to come is going to be the 11th China-LAC Business Summit. 

We are organizing this event with CCPIT China. We are trying to have our joint commission of trade between the Ministry of Commerce of China and our Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In this business summit, we will go through challenges of e-commerce, challenges of renewable energy, challenges of many areas that we think have a lot of potential for investment of Chinese companies in Latin America in general, but especially in Uruguay. We really hope Chinese companies would go to the summit, visit our ports, talk to our people and discover those great opportunities we offer in our country.