China has confirmed it will sign a free-trade deal with El Salvador, which could see Chinese investments flowing into the Latin American country's seafood sector.
El Salvador Vice President Félix Ulloa said that China had offered to buy the country’s USD 21 billion (EUR 20.3 billion) in foreign debt as part of the deal, The Guardian reported.
The country’s ambassador to China, Aldo Álvarez, said earlier this year that Chinese companies were keen to invest in the fisheries sector in El Salvador, a central American country in the South Pacific.
“They’re interested in seafood,” Álvarez told Canal 33. “We don’t have a fishing industry, it’s very artisanal. There are many Chinese investors who are interested in creating industrial infrastructure to extract seafood products.”
Álvarez said a Chinese commercial fisheries group had sought to set up operations in El Salvador, but did not offer more details. Álvarez also said that Chinese investors were keen on investing in pork processing as well as “banking digitalization,” with a focus on Bitcoin, which El Salvador adopted as legal tender in September 2021. El Salvador is also moving toward issuing Bitcoin-backed bonds.
China recently finalized a free-trade agreement with Nicaragua, El Salvador’s Central American neighbor. Beijing promised Nicaragua a free-trade deal in return for it switching diplomatic recognition from Taiwan in December 2021, and El Salvador performed a similar about-face in 2018. Like Nicaragua, El Salvador has seen its relations with the U.S. deteriorate due in large part to what Washington and its allies has seen as backpedaling in the country’s democratic values under the presidency of Nayib Bukele.
SeafoodSource has contacted the embassy of El Salvador in Beijing to attempt to collect more details regarding the free-trade agreement.
Photo courtesy of Guayo Fuentes/Shutterstock
