Ecuador works on trade deal with Eurasian Economic Commission

This Tuesday, Ecuador’s Foreign Trade Minister said his country is optimistic it can reach a trade deal with the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) in the first half of 2019.

Ecuador’s Pablo Campana and the EEC’s trade minister, Veronika Nikishina, in Quito took part in an initial meeting of the Joint Committee on Economic and Commercial Cooperation between Ecuador and the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU).

That bloc, with the EEC as an executive body, is made up of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan. The EAEU is a market of more than 1 billion people that is Ecuador’s third-largest trade partner.

“Ecuador is characterized by the strength of its export products in the farm sector, aquaculture and fishing and products in the agro-industrial sector,” Campana said at a press conference in which he underscored the EAEU’s potential as a market for Ecuador.

In turn, he noted that the Andean nation imports raw materials that it does not produce, fertilizers, wheat and in some cases “medicine and chemical products.”

According to laht.com, trade between Ecuador and the EAEU nations amounts to more than $1 billion annually, although that represents only a small portion of both parties’ total exports and imports.