BRASILIA: China is considered a priority market in the work plan of the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex), said the chairman, Ambassador Roberto Jaguaribe.
In this context, exchange with the Pan Pearl River Delta can help to improve the relationship between Brazil and China, the diplomat said during a meeting with a delegation of about 50 representatives of the nine provinces of the region, as well as Macau and Hong Kong, who arrived in Brasilia.
Brazilian investment in China remains very low, at around USD500 to 600 million, while Chinese investment in Brazil totals over USD15 billion so far.
As part of this strategy, Apex, which works in a similar way to the Macau Trade and Investment Promotion Institute (IPIM), created Unidade China, which began operating in January 2017.
The agency’s chief executive Augusto Castro, said that bilateral relations are still in their “infancy” and that the potential path for growth is exponential.
With the creation of the hub, the proposal, according to Castro, is to work towards increasing investments between the two countries in the coming years, and he noted the environment, infrastructure, technological and business innovation, agri-business, image and promotion of culture and e-commerce as priority areas.
In the agri-business sector a great bilateral alliance should be created to expand cooperation, said the head of Apex, noting that Brazil is the second largest supplier of products in this segment to China and the biggest meat supplier.
In the technological and business innovation area, there is a cooperation program for technology parks in China and Brazil, which may enable the production of goods with higher added value and higher technological content, which are points of interest for the two countries.
Brazil has seen great progress in reducing CO² emissions by 41 percent between 2005 and 2012, said Castro, recalling that the participation of renewable energy in Brazil’s energy structure is the highest in the world, or about 42 percent.
The President of IPIM, Jackson Chang, who leads the mission to Brazil, said the delegation was interested in finding out about the development of green industries and fostering interaction with both the Brazilian government and corporations.
The delegation will also have meetings in Brasilia with representatives of the Operations and Management Centre of the Amazonian Protection System (Censipam) with the Ministry of Defense and the Ministries of Environment and Planning, Development and Management.
