Still hurting from a yearlong drought, Argentina is turning to Chile for wine imports in order to keep up with popular demand for wine.
President Dmitry Medvedev called new arms and energy deals between Russia and Ecuador just a beginning as Moscow strives to deepen ties in Latin America. Medvedev and Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa announced a 22 million US dollars deal for Russia to provide Ecuador with two Mi-17 transport helicopters.
Ecuador is to pay royalties to the holders of international pharmaceutical patents, basing the payments on the sale price of locally produced medicines, the Ecuadorian Institute of Intellectual Property, or IEPI, said this week.
Relations between Argentina and Chile are going through an optimum moment and once we drill through the Andes, “ghosts of the past will definitively have gone”, said Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner during the first of her two day visit to Chile.
Faced with extremely tight finances, both the city and province of Buenos Aires have decided to pay suppliers with bonds to bridge the widening spending gap, the Argentine State Supplier Union, or UAPE, said in a press release Thursday.
“Central America and the Caribbean, historical sugar-producing economies where the sugar-ethanol infrastructure already has a foundation, labor costs are low, and the political conditions are more or less stable– offers the best near-term potential for large-scale sugarcane ethanol production. This is a market opportunity which Cuba, with the longest experience of sugar–ethanol and sugarcane derivates production in the region, is positioned to take advantage of”.
Brazil's Senate foreign relations committee approved on Thursday in a divided vote Venezuela's request to join Mercosur despite concerns over President Hugo Chavez's authoritarian style of government. The vote comes when President Lula da Silva flies to Caracas to sign huge contracts for Brazilian corporations.