The Diplomat
The President of Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso, yesterday made the first day of his two-day working visit to Spain, whose main objective is to attract investment for its economic modernization strategy Más Ecuador en el Mundo y Más Mundo en el Ecuador (More Ecuador in the World and More World in Ecuador).
The day began with an audience with King Philip VI at La Zarzuela Palace, which was also attended by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares; the Spanish Ambassador to Ecuador, Elena Madrazo; the Ecuadorian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Human Mobility, Mauricio Montalvo; and Ecuador’s ambassador-at-large for strategic issues and one of the President’s closest advisors, Juan Carlos Holguín. This is Lasso’s first official visit to a European Union country since taking office. Last May, King Philip VI traveled to Ecuador to attend the inauguration ceremony of the Ecuadorian president.
In the afternoon, Guillermo Lasso was received at La Moncloa Palace by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, who underlined the mutual interest in “strengthening economic relations between both countries” and congratulated the Ecuadorian President for the recent renegotiation of the financing agreement reached with the IMF, reiterating, in this sense, Spain’s future support before the main multilateral financial organizations, such as the IMF, WB or IDB.
The attraction of investments is one of the main axes of the working visit of Guillermo Lasso, who arrived in Spain accompanied by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Mauricio Montalvo; Telecommunications, Vianna Maino; and Production and Foreign Trade, Julio José Prado. According to the Ecuadorian Presidency, Lasso wishes to “continue deploying the strategy More Ecuador in the world and more world in Ecuador“, a plan of the Andean Government to put out to tender a series of strategic projects in sectors such as infrastructure, mining, oil and energy with the aim of reaching 30 billion dollars (almost 26 billion euros) in investments and creating two million jobs by 2025.
In this context, the main objective of Lasso’s trip to Madrid was to encourage Spanish companies – from sectors such as renewable energies, infrastructure, telecommunications and mining – to participate in his strategic plan, as is already the case, within the framework of this same plan, with the Quito Metro project, which has a budget of more than 1.7 billion euros and whose execution corresponds to a consortium of Spanish companies.
“The increase of investments is one of our axes in Spain”
With this purpose, the Ecuadorian president participated yesterday in the Spain-Ecuador business meeting, organized by the Chamber of Commerce of Spain together with the Secretary of State for Trade -through ICEX Spain Export and Investments-, the Spanish Confederation of Business Organizations (CEOE), the Embassy of Ecuador and PROECUADOR. “The increase of investments is one of the axes of our work in Spain”, said the president, during the meeting, attended by representatives of a hundred companies. “The Government does not have resources, nor does it have a large debt capacity, therefore, our development model relies heavily on the private sector,” Lasso added.
Spanish investments in Ecuador reached US$2.362 billion in 2019, in sectors such as crude oil extraction, commercial distribution, manufacturing of non-metallic mineral products, telecommunications and the food industry, among others. According to the Bank of Ecuador, Spain remained in 2020 as the second foreign investor, with 230.9 million dollars, 20% of the total and only behind Canada. Apart from that, Spain was in 2019 the first exporter to Ecuador and the second importer of the entire EU. The two countries have a Bilateral Investment Treaty signed in 1996, which Spain hopes to renew as of 2022. In parallel, trade relations are framed in the context of the EU Trade Agreement with Ecuador, Colombia and Peru.
Today, Guillermo Lasso will participate in the ABC Spain-Ecuador Forum: Thinking the S-XXI, in which he will be the main guest and in which will also participate, among others, the former President of Government José María Aznar, and will later visit the President of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso. Once his official agenda is over, the President will hold a meeting tomorrow with Ecuadorians living in Spain. Ecuadorians are the third largest foreign community in our country, with more than 430,000 members.
