Mexico City – The Mexico-European Union Chamber of Commerce (MexChamEU) to promote business and trade cooperation between Latin American countries and European countries has been launched in Brussels, the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced in a communiqué. “The head of Mexico’s mission to the European Union, Rogelio Granguillhome Morfin, has chaired an event dedicated to the launch of the Mexico-European Union Chamber of Commerce (MexChamEU) in Brussels, Belgium.
“The initiative aims to strengthen economic ties, promote business collaboration and improve trade ties between our country and the 27 member states of the European Union,” the ministry said on Wednesday.
The chamber of commerce, made up of business representatives, will focus on sectors with high growth potential, such as technology, agriculture, manufacturing and renewable energy, and will attract additional investment from Europe to Mexico, the communique said.
From the IMF’s official website, it is stated that most countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have not fully exploited the potential of international trade, an important driver of economic growth in emerging markets.
Although the region has made some progress in trade openness, progress remains hampered primarily by poor infrastructure, burdensome customs procedures, and relatively high tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade.
One important measure of trade openness, the amount of exports and imports of goods and services, only reaches 47 percent of gross domestic product.
That’s about 20 percentage points below the level of other emerging markets around the world.
Trade between countries in the region also lags behind and generally remains stagnant at less than 20 percent of total Latin American trade.
This figure is only half the level of intra-regional trade in Eastern Europe and Central Asia and a third of the level in East Asia.
Latin America’s participation in global value chains is also limited. This is because many countries focus more on exporting raw commodities rather than semi-finished or finished goods, although Mexico’s much more integrated economy is a notable exception, especially due to its close ties with the United States.
