After the meeting held by the Minister of Agriculture, Antonio Walker, with the recently appointed ambassador of Chile in China, Luis Schmidt, the sectorial authority of the Government of President Piñera highlighted the potential of Chilean products in the Asian market and the work that the new representative of the country in the Asian nation will perform.
"Having an ambassador who understands the agricultural issue in depth is very important. For us, Asia is the future, the horizon of Chilean agriculture. Therefore, we reviewed with the ambassador all the potential we have in the Chinese market," said Walker.
He also stated that they had the desire to open the Chinese market for European pears before the next harvest. "It's been the aspiration of all of the producers of pome fruits, especially European pears. After we do this, we are going to continue with citrus fruits, and we also have the challenge of the farm that Luis Schmidt founded, which was very important in order to win the trust of the Chinese Government." he stated.
In the same line, the Minister specified that "we have many challenges, but one of the objectives of the Ministry of Agriculture is to conquer the Chinese and Asian market, because we see that the future of our products is there.
Another issue that they addressed with the ambassador was the trade dispute between the United States and China. "This is a war where everyone loses. In recent months, we've seen a precipitous fall of copper and, in the agricultural sector, nut producers have suffered a tariff increase, from 30% to 100%, because India put tariffs on the United States, which also affected us," said Schmidt.
In this regard, Walker announced that he would meet with the Minister of Agriculture of India at the meeting of the G-20 that will take place on July 27 in Buenos Aires, to personally deal with the issue of tariffs on nuts. "Chile has more than 40 thousand hectares planted with walnut trees and we are betting very strongly on the Indian market. We find it very unfair that these tariffs have gone up from 30% to 100% when the fruit was sailing. It is a reprisal that India takes against the United States that has this side effect in our nuts and in our country."
Source: Minagri