\n\t The countries in Latin America and the Caribbean are a solution for the expansion of Romanian exports and reducing the country\u2019s dependence on the negative developments in the euro zone in recent years, said Romania\u2019s president Traian Basescu on Sunday in Santiago de Chile, the city hosting a summit bringing together the European Union and the CELAC states, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.<\/p>\n
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\n\tIn the opinion of the Romanian president, the main outcome of the meeting was a strategic partnership agreement between the EU and CELAC leaders with major benefits for bilateral trade, which stood at 200 billion dollars in 2012. The Romanian president said another reason for which Europeans are interested in consolidating this partnership is the fact that together, the EU-CELAC economies account for one third of the world\u2019s GDP. In the last ten years, the European Union investment in Latin America and the Caribbean area has exceeded 400 billion euros. Traian Basescu also spoke about Romania\u2019s interests in the area:<\/p>\n
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\n\t \u201cIn 2012, trade exchanges between Romania and the Latin American countries went up by 47%. Romania\u2019s exports to the area amounted to 700 million euros, while Latin American exports to Romania stood at 600 million in the first 11 months of 2012.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n\tAccording to the president, Romanian companies now have the opportunity to boost their exports to Latin American markets, given the existing or soon to be signed trade agreements between the European Union and the states in the area.<\/p>\n
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\n\tTraian Basescu: \u201cThe framework created by this summit will allow Romanian companies to diversify their export markets. Just as in the last 2-3 years we have returned to the Arab world, we must also return to the Latin American states and enter the Caribbean markets so as to reduce our dependence on everything that happens in the European Union. We have learned our lesson from the euro zone crisis, the consequences of which we experienced last year and also this year, but hopefully it will be better in 2014. One thing is clear, though, that the CELAC states are a solution for the expansion of our foreign trade.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n\tPresident Basescu also spoke about the chances of Romanian companies to sign good contracts following a series of economic missions to the region. He mentioned the case of the Astra company based in Arad, which received an offer to export passenger, freight and underground train carriages to Brazil.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The latest EU-Latin America summit, which Romanias President Traian Basescu attended alongside 40 other European leaders, was in his opinion one of the most important in the last few years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42704,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37738],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-42703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-today-in-the-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n