The president highlighted the progress of that initiative, as well as the eventual signing of what he described as “a mini FTA.”
President Luis Lacalle Pou He anticipated that “the process should be imminent” so that Uruguayan businessmen and investors can travel without a visa to USA, an agreement that began to take shape last June and that has the approval of both political blocs in that country.
Lacalle Pou He also highlighted the progress towards the signing of what he described as “a mini FTA (FTA)” with the government headed by the US president Joe Biden, one of the country’s main trading partners.
“I don’t want to advance times, but it seems to me that we are on a very good path,” said the Uruguayan president when asked at a press conference about the visas, although he clarified that “when it does not depend only on one government, we will see how it gets there.”
This is the project named Economic Association between the United States and Uruguay, drafted by Democratic senators Bob Menendez and Tim Kaine, and for the republican Bill Hagerty, which seeks to improve visa eligibility for Uruguayan businessmen and investors.
The initiative also opens the way to facilitate access to the visa for any citizen, since it requires that the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State inform Congress about the country’s eligibility for inclusion in the Visa Waiver Program.
The alliance between Uruguay and the United States is strengthened
When referring to the project, Lacalle Pou pointed out that “there are two issues that were part of a negotiation bill that the two major political parties of USA presented at the Parliament” and stated: “That gives important cohesion to the system.”
By focusing on the mini TLC, He stressed that it excludes “some basic products like ours, such as meat or agriculture,” but in any case he assessed that “an enormous possibility opens up.”
Along these lines, the president recalled that Uruguay “exports 1,000 million dollars a year in terms of technology and our big buyer is USA”, by highlighting the country’s role in the exports of services.
“If we can generate even more current from these services even better, in addition to raw materials and some with some industrialization process,” he concluded. Lacalle Pou.
Source: Ambito
