MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

On Monday Customs delayed back-log of Argentina made-cars should be in Brazil

Last Friday Brazil cleared 11.700 Argentine made cars

Argentina and Brazil seem to be again on the path of normalizing bilateral trade following the mid May spat that triggered a round of technical exchanges in Buenos Aires and a final meeting at ministerial level in Brasilia. On Monday, allegedly all the Argentine cars delayed in the border will have been cleared into Brazil.

Only hours after the meeting between Argentine Industry Minister Debora Giorgi and her Brazilian counterpart, Fernando Pimentel, Brazil allowed 11,700 Argentine- made cars into the country that had been held at the border during the conflict between both nations. Value of the cars was estimated in 200 million USD.

At last week’s two hour meeting between Giorgi and Pimentel it was agreed to speed up trade between both countries and strictly comply with the non automatic import licences maximum period admitted by the World Trade Organization, WTO, which is 60 days.

Differences over the implementation of the sixty days licence period, and Argentina’s efforts to try and balance bilateral trade with Brazil which last year was over 33 billion USD but with a 4 billion surplus for Brazil, have been at the heart of the dispute.

At the height of the trade dispute Brazil prevented Argentine made cars to enter the country, as retaliation to Argentina applying of non-automatic licenses on 529 Brazilian products, including shoes, tires and agricultural machinery.

“Last week’s agreement made Argentina give priority to non automatic licences applied on agriculture machinery from multinational corporations established in Brazil”, according to Argentine sources.

Apparently an additional incentive for Buenos Aires to facilitate the farm equipment imports is the fact that at least two of those corporations have plans to set up factories in Argentina. One of them has already announced it will be investing 100 million US dollars in a plant to manufacture tractors, engines and harvesters. A percentage of the parts will be imported, in a complementation agreement, from Brazil.