Andrés Manuel López Obrador confirmed the Cuban government’s participation in the summit that he, together with Argentine President Alberto Fernández, proposed finding common solutions to the inflationary crisis that the Latin American region is going through.
This was announced by the Mexican President on Thursday during his usual morning conference He claimed that the purpose was to “cope with the high cost of living together.”reported the newspaper Milenio.
He said, Next April 5, all leaders will hold a conference call and later an in-person summitwhich would take place in Mexico to promote a trade agreement with Brazil, Argentina, Cuba, Colombia, Chile, Bolivia and Honduras for duty-free food exchanges that would allow fighting inflation in Latin America.
López Obrador stated that he had already spoken to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from Brazil, Gustavo Petro from Colombia, Miguel Díaz-Canel from Cuba and Alberto Fernández from Argentina. The latter would have promised to add his colleagues from Chile and Bolivia, Gabriel Boric and Luis Arce.
For the details of the initiative He specified that they will try to “remove tariffs and barriers that prevent food from being available at a good price for the countries’ internal market”.
According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL), most Latin American countries have been suffering from “chronic inflation” for several years. Venezuela has the worst numbers in the region, but so far it has not been invited to the meeting. Daniel Ortega from Nicaragua was also not mentioned, despite the ideological harmony of both with those summoned.
Yesterday morning, noon and late at night, I spoke with our friends, the Presidents of Brazil, Colombia, Cuba and Argentina. We agreed to meet via video conference to face inflation and help each other. pic.twitter.com/Tp68dyaeTJ
– Andrés Manuel (@lopezobrador_) March 2, 2023
“I take this opportunity to tell you that for this reason we will implement an anti-inflation plan for mutual growth assistance and commercial economic exchanges with Latin American countries,” López Obrador told the press and guests at his daily conference.
Subsequently, the Mexican President published a video on his social networks in which he speaks to several Presidents involved in the initiative.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecast that inflation in Latin America will end this year at 7.1%, the agency published last October. Argentina ranked fourth in the world with an inflation rate of nearly 95% in 2022, while Colombia suffered the highest price hike in the past two decades, breaking the 11% hurdle, the IMF reported.
López Obrador is banking on throwing a lifeline to the Cuban regimeand has strengthened ties with Díaz-Canel, whom he has hosted twice in Mexico in just over a year, in addition to an official visit to the island in May 2022.
In addition to hiring more than 500 doctors exported from Havana, the President bought a significant number of doses of Cuban-made anti-Covid vaccines, in addition to tons of ballast for the Mayan train works, one of the main projects of his presidency.
Cuba ended 2022 with an inflation rate of 175%according to the ranking of the American economist Steve H. Hanke from the renowned Johns Hopkins University. This phenomenon worsened after the government launched a huge economic package in January 2021 this aggravated the plight of the majority of Cubans.
Since then, food prices have skyrocketed and domestic production has declined. To date, Havana has not proposed a program to curb runaway inflation. In contrast, what little food he sells in the military-run dollar stores, the best-stocked in the country, hasn’t stopped growing either.