Mexico announces that Ecuadorian shrimp and bananas will not enter into a trade agreement

The President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, indicated on December 23, 2022 that shrimp and bananas from Ecuador will not be included in the trade agreement that these two countries are negotiating and that is about to be defined.

“We are going to sign it, but in that agreement it was included to remove tariffs for the importation of two products that they were proposing: shrimp and bananas. I told him that we were not going to be able, in this case, to include plantains and shrimp,” said the president who told President Guillermo Lasso.

Why is Ecuadorian shrimp so feared by its competitors?

What López Obrador said is taken by the National Chamber of Fisheries and Aquaculture Industries of Mexico as support for the shrimp sector in his country and the thousands of families that depend on the activity. It is indicated that there 430,000 family members depend directly on this activity.

Mexico in 2019 ranked as the 7th shrimp producer worldwide with a production of 237,647 tons and regionally it is only surpassed by Ecuador, according to official figures from that country.

In Ecuador there is no official pronouncement from the Government. But the president of the National Aquaculture Chamber (CNA), José Antonio Camposano, indicated that “the position of the sector has been the same since the beginning of the negotiation. An evaluation can only be made once the negotiation has been concluded. Today, given that access would not be given to the main product of the Ecuadorian offer, pursuing the signing of a commercial treaty without significant value for the country loses relevance”.

While from the Association of Banana Exporters of Ecuador (AEBE), its executive director, José Antonio Hidalgo, said that this response expressed by the Mexican president will have to be analyzed within the attached room with the authorities and internally review what will be the conclusions. “As a sector we put ourselves at your service to always discuss technically in this space that we have as a private sector with the negotiating teams.”

Of the three agreements that Ecuador proposed for 2022, only the one with Costa Rica has been closed

The Government had the expectation of being able to close the negotiations with Mexico before the end of 2022, since it has an advance of 99%.

A trade agreement must be reached with Mexico for Ecuador to enter the Pacific Alliance. This December 14, the presidents of this block were going to meet so that López Obrador handed over the presidency pro tempore to Peru. However, that appointment was postponed due to the political conflict that occurred in Peru, where President Pedro Castillo was ousted. (YO)