Aleem Khan

Min­is­ter of Trade, In­dus­try, In­vest­ment and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Vas­ant Bharath will be one of on­ly three min­is­ters from Latin Amer­i­ca to hold high-lev­el bi­lat­er­al in­vest­ment meet­ings at the 6th Latin Amer­i­ca Chi­na In­vestors Fo­rum (LACIF), a re­lease from Latin Fi­nance said yes­ter­day.

"Chi­na and Latin Amer­i­ca are set to en­ter a new chap­ter in their eco­nom­ic re­la­tion­ship," Latin Fi­nance said. A sol­id base built on Chi­na's de­mand for Latin Amer­i­can nat­ur­al re­sources has evolved in­to a much deep­er bond around Latin Amer­i­ca's chang­ing de­mo­graph­ics and abun­dance of nat­ur­al re­sources, the fo­rum or­gan­is­er said.

As the pace of trade and in­vest­ment rapid­ly in­creas­es, gov­ern­ments and com­pa­nies from Chi­na and Latin Amer­i­ca are be­com­ing even more linked, forg­ing new deals and mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ments across dif­fer­ent sec­tors, it said.

To iden­ti­fy op­por­tu­ni­ties and to ex­plain this chang­ing bi­lat­er­al re­la­tion­ship, Latin Fi­nance holds the Latin Amer­i­ca Chi­na In­vestors Fo­rum (LACIF) every Sep­tem­ber in Bei­jing. Now in its sixth year, the fo­rum plan­ner said the event "has ce­ment­ed its po­si­tion as the pre-em­i­nent busi­ness and in­vest­ment meet­ing con­nect­ing Latin Amer­i­ca and Chi­na." The fo­rum is de­signed to con­nect Latin Amer­i­can com­pa­nies, bankers, funds, ad­vi­sors and gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials with se­nior rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Chi­nese state-owned en­ter­prise, mul­ti­lat­er­als, as­set man­agers, banks, and gov­ern­ment agen­cies.

This year's fo­rum will fea­ture tech­ni­cal pre­sen­ta­tions and round­ta­bles, in­clud­ing the view­points of three gov­ern­ment min­is­ters from Latin Amer­i­ca: Uruguay's Min­is­ter of Econ­o­my & Fi­nance Mario Bergara; T&T's Min­is­ter of Trade, In­dus­try, In­vest­ment and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Vas­ant Bharath; and Paraguay's Min­is­ter of In­dus­try & Com­merce Gus­ta­vo Leite.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, this year, more than 350 se­nior of­fi­cials will at­tend–in­clud­ing more than 75 Chi­nese port­fo­lio and di­rect in­vestors who have al­ready con­firmed their at­ten­dance–from Chi­na CAMC En­gi­neer­ing, AZ In­vest­ment Man­age­ment, Chi­na In­vest­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (CIC), Gold­wind In­ter­na­tion­al Hold­ings, CWE In­ter­na­tion­al In­vest­ment Corp, In­come Part­ners, Chi­na Ex­port Cred­it & In­sur­ance Cor­po­ra­tion (Sinosure), SK Chi­na, Paci­fique As­set Man­age­ment. Hy­drochi­na Cor­po­ra­tion, Sinos­teel Cor­po­ra­tion, and oth­ers.

LACIF fea­tures two days of pan­els, in­ter­ac­tive pre­sen­ta­tions and pri­vate one-on-one meet­ings to con­nect par­tic­i­pants and as­sist them "in the de­vel­op­ment of tan­gi­ble busi­ness re­la­tion­ships," the re­lease said.

Latin Fi­nance list­ed as oth­er "con­firmed speak­ers" from T&T, Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Jwala Ram­bar­ran; In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Varun Ma­haraj; and Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Ian Chi­napoo. How­ev­er, when con­tact­ed for more in­for­ma­tion, the Cen­tral Bank's com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fice de­nied Ram­bar­ran would at­tend. An e-mail from the Cen­tral Bank com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Char­lene Ramd­hanie said: "Gov­er­nor is not trav­el­ing to Chi­na. This is con­flict­ing with the Glob­al Pol­i­cy Fo­rum, which you all will be in­vit­ed to cov­er at the Hy­att. He did at­tend the New York City In­vestor meet­ing in (June) with Latin Fi­nance."

LACIF, which takes place Sep­tem­ber 11-12, at the West­in Chaoyang in Bei­jing, pre­cedes the 8th Chi­na-Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (LAC) Busi­ness Sum­mit to be held in Chang­sha City, (Hu­nan Province, Chi­na) on Sep­tem­ber 12 and 13.