The Argentine Wine Corporation (COVIAR) and the Argentine ambassadors in Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Panama agreed this Monday (03.08.2020/XNUMX/XNUMX) to work together to to promote foreign sales of bottled and bulk wines, must, raisins and fresh grapes.
With the aim of promoting sales abroad, they participated in a COVIAR virtual meeting with Argentine ambassadors in Central America (Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Panama), the presidents of the business chambers of must and bulk wine and companies dedicated to the export of grapes and raisins.
According to COVIAR, «Central American countries represent a market of 75 million inhabitants, with a strong presence of international tourism and a consolidated demand for products from the wine chain that Argentina can take advantage of and enhance».
In this context, the president of the wine corporation, José Alberto Zuccardi, said about the meeting that "there is a central point to work on that has to do with tariffs and non-tariff barriers that may exist, but the objective is to exchange information; we offer the statistical data and market intelligence that we can do from the Vitivinicola Observatory so that we can act in an integrated manner with the embassies and companies in the sector that want to increase their exports."
For his part, the Argentine ambassador to Nicaragua, Daniel Capitanich, stressed that "a market of 75 million inhabitants with an extraordinary surface area and geographical and cultural proximity is a great opportunity that we must address together and that is what we intend to do."
Along with Capitanich, the ambassadors of the Dominican Republic, Nora Capello, Rubén Ruffi, from El Salvador, and Marcelo Lucco, ambassador to Panama, were present at the virtual meeting. Mauricio Pellegrina and José Bek also attended, representing the Argentine Agency for Investment and Foreign Trade.
The region comprising Costa Rica, Belize, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador registered total imports of 21,5 million liters of bottled wine and 661.000 liters of bulk wine during 2019, which represented a 7% growth in volume compared to 2018.
From this market, Argentina has only a 13% share in the case of bottled wines (Chile has 48%) and does not participate in the case of bulk wines (Spain has 59% of the total business).
For his part, the president of the Argentine Chamber of Exporters and Distributors of Bulk Wine, José Bartolucci, recalled that The country currently represents only 2,5% to 3% of the world trade in bulk wines and the goal is to reach between 5% and 8%"which would be very important for Argentine winemaking," he stressed.
"We have a great opportunity in Central America and to achieve this we need to work hard together with our embassies and commercial attachés," Nartolucci said.
In turn, the president of the National Institute of Viticulture (V), Martín Hinojosa, pledged to continue working with the aim of promoting Argentine wine exports.
Source: Telam
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