Alexandre Rocha*
São Paulo – Tree trade talks between the Mercosur, the economic bloc that includes Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) will be retaken next week. Representatives of both blocs are going to meet on Monday (09) and Tuesday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The last meeting of the kind took place almost one year ago, in November 2005.
According to Brazilian diplomats approached by ANBA, the scope of the agreement is not yet known; whether it will contemplate just the trade of good, or whether services and investment will also be included. The forecasts of the Brazilian negotiators, however, are that the treaty should be very ample and the negotiations, fast.
Representatives of the Itamaraty will be leaving Brazil on Friday (06) with the objective of trying to complete the agreement this year, or at least an initial part of it. If everything goes as planned, another two meetings should take place this year.
Brazil currently holds the rotating presidency of the Mercosur. The delegation will be led by ambassador Régis Arslanian, director at the international negotiation department at the Brazilian Foreign Office (Itamaraty). He will be accompanied by diplomats from Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.
To the representatives of the South American bloc, there should be no great hindrances to the negotiations, as the economies of both blocs do not compete. The GCC includes Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Oman. Most of these countries are large producers of oil and gas.
In the evaluation of the Brazilian Foreign Office (Itamaraty) there are not many "sensitive" areas, i.e., areas that both blocs are interested in protecting from competition with each other. According to a diplomat involved in the talks, the Mercosur is prepared to go wherever the GCC wishes.
Negotiations could have started again in the first half, but, according to the Itamaraty, this did not take place due to the lack of available dates. The Mercosur, however, has already sent to the GCC, various models of documents that are part of the agreement, covering themes like the regime of origin and safeguards. Officially, the process began with the signing of a framework agreement during the Summit of South American – Arab Countries, in May 2005.
Bilateral trade
Brazil already has an expressive volume of trade with the countries of the GCC, especially with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Between January and September this year, according to figures supplied by the Federal Government Foreign Trade Secretariat, Brazilian exports to the bloc generated US$ 1.96 billion. Imports, in turn, totalled US$ 1.4 billion.
*Translated by Mark Ament
