China free trade agreement takes effect Wednesday; Ecuador-Colombia electric connection is restored; Baños promotes its recipes; License appts. online

Lunes, 29/4/2024

Hola, Todos –

Titular –

Ecuador y China aplican el Tratado de Libre Comercio (Ecuador and China implement Free Trade Agreement) – The Free Trade Agreement between China and Ecuador will come into force this miércoles, 1/5. In the 1st phase, there will be more than 4.600 types of products that can be imported from China with 0% tariffs. These will be supplies or products for the industrial sector such as fertilizers, agricultural chemicals, hydraulic pumps, tractors, electrical transformers, and some medicines. For consumers, bicycles, LED lamps, digital cameras and other products will come in free of tariffs. More products will be added in 5 to 10 years.

Prices for thousands of consumer and industrial products will drop as the trade agreement with China takes effect Wednesday. (El Mercurio)

For Ecuador, 99.6% of its export products will have preferential access to the Chinese market with 0% tariffs immediately or gradually. China is the 2nd largest market for Ecuadorian exports and the 1st in non-petroleum products. In 2023, Ecuador had a positive trade balance. It exported $5.673 billion to China, and imported $5.151 billion. Shrimp was the biggest export with 1.576 billion pounds and a value of $3.5 billion, and will be free of tariffs within 10 years. <I hope that the shrimp farms don’t collapse due to climate change before the country gets that advantageous tariff. Although if there’s a collapse of shrimp farming, the country’s probably got bigger problems than tariffs to worry about – like extremely destructive weather events.>

Cuenca –

Turnos para licencias (License appointments) – The Agencia Nacional de Tránsito started a feature el 22/4 which allows rescheduling appointments online. If you need to reschedule, go to www.ant.gob.ec and pick a new date and time but at the same office where you originally scheduled your appointment. You can only do this once, at no cost. <Sounds like you can only blow off ANT once.>

Region –

Baños documenta sus recetas gastronómicas (Baños documents its gastronomic recipes) – The Junta Parroquial de Baños and the Instituto de Formación en Gastronomía, Turismo y Hotelería (GTH) are carrying out a project to save recipes. Part of the project includes theory and practice workshops in manufacturing and gastronomic tourism. Afterwards, recipes for timbúlos, chaquis and cuchichaquis <Google showed me a video of cuchichaquis which are ground mote and maybe cheese wrapped in a leaf.> were documented. A publication mentioned on the Facebook account of the Junta Parroquial de Baños mentioned that the recipes corresponded to those saved for over 3 generations.

Nacional –

Se restablece interconexión eléctrica Ecuador-Colombia (Ecuador-Colombia electrical interconnection is restored) – The critical interconnection between Ecuador’s and Colombia’s electrical power grid has been restored. Last week, Colombia had completely cut the electrical connection with Ecuador in the middle of a critical energy situation for both countries. Following technical talks between the operators of both national electrical systems, government spokespersons said several issues had been resolved and the systems were connected again. Colombia had disconnected its system from Ecuador’s because, even without exportation of electricity which had ended earlier, it faces drought conditions affecting electric generation and drinking water supplies in that country. Technicians say the interconnection is important since it acts as “shock absorber” for high voltage lines and transfer facilities.

And that’s all for today so hasta ? –

Jeanne