Argentina and Thailand strengthen cooperation
With an agreement on ten new cooperation projects sealed earlier in 2013, Argentina and Thailand – though geographically quite far apart from each other – are now moving increasingly closer.
The agreement is part of the so-called South-South and Triangular Cooperation, originally put in place by the United Nations Development Programme. The framework of this cooperation aims to stimulate political, economic, social, cultural, environmental and technical collaboration between countries on the southern hemisphere as an emerging form of a new global relation ‘architecture’, moving away from the traditional North-South axis.
Cooperation between Thailand and Argentina began to intensify in 2010 with the first Argentina-Thailand Joint Committee and the subsequent signing of five development projects, mainly in the agriculture sector. In March 2013, another ten projects were approved.
The new projects will cover cooperation in the field of agriculture, education and astronomy, as well as genetics, and will receive financial support from the Argentina Fund for South-South and Triangular Cooperation (FO-AR) and the Thailand International Cooperation Development Agency (TICA).
Although Argentina has a long tradition in international cooperation, only in the past five years Southeast Asia caught the attention of the FO-AR as a result of a new focus in Argentina’s 2013-2015 Action Plan, which is aimed at strengthening political and economic ties particularly with Asia.
The FO-AR fund, created in 1992, has been the principal tool of Argentine foreign cooperation, but historically has focused its attention on the Latin American region. However, since end-2007, when Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner assumed her second mandate as the country’s president, interest in the ASEAN region increased.
One of the reasons for this shift was a re-focus of Argentina’s foreign policy and the aim to acquire new international trade partners in the wake of rising economic volatility in the US and Europe.
Historically, the rapprochement of Argentina to Southeast Asia has been practically zero during Nestor Kirchner’s presidency (2003-2007) as the country was busy enough to reconstruct itself after a severe economic crisis.
Only Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, in power since December 2007, started promoting new international non-traditional partners to mitigate falling the demand for export goods from developed countries.
That way, ASEAN came on the agenda and a number of official visits and trade missions followed. Among the latest were the visit of Hector Timerman, Argentina’s Minister of Foreign Relations, who led several commercial missions to the Philippines and Indonesia in October 2012, and Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s meeting with the Prime Minister of Vietnam, Nguyen Tan Dung, in January 2013.
[caption id="attachment_9792" align="alignleft" width="300"] View of Buenos Aires[/caption] With an agreement on ten new cooperation projects sealed earlier in 2013, Argentina and Thailand - though geographically quite far apart from each other - are now moving increasingly closer. The agreement is part of the so-called South-South and Triangular Cooperation, originally put in place by the United Nations Development Programme. The framework of this cooperation aims to stimulate political, economic, social, cultural, environmental and technical collaboration between countries on the southern hemisphere as an emerging form of a new global relation 'architecture', moving away from the traditional North-South axis. Cooperation between Thailand...
With an agreement on ten new cooperation projects sealed earlier in 2013, Argentina and Thailand – though geographically quite far apart from each other – are now moving increasingly closer.
The agreement is part of the so-called South-South and Triangular Cooperation, originally put in place by the United Nations Development Programme. The framework of this cooperation aims to stimulate political, economic, social, cultural, environmental and technical collaboration between countries on the southern hemisphere as an emerging form of a new global relation ‘architecture’, moving away from the traditional North-South axis.
Cooperation between Thailand and Argentina began to intensify in 2010 with the first Argentina-Thailand Joint Committee and the subsequent signing of five development projects, mainly in the agriculture sector. In March 2013, another ten projects were approved.
The new projects will cover cooperation in the field of agriculture, education and astronomy, as well as genetics, and will receive financial support from the Argentina Fund for South-South and Triangular Cooperation (FO-AR) and the Thailand International Cooperation Development Agency (TICA).
Although Argentina has a long tradition in international cooperation, only in the past five years Southeast Asia caught the attention of the FO-AR as a result of a new focus in Argentina’s 2013-2015 Action Plan, which is aimed at strengthening political and economic ties particularly with Asia.
The FO-AR fund, created in 1992, has been the principal tool of Argentine foreign cooperation, but historically has focused its attention on the Latin American region. However, since end-2007, when Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner assumed her second mandate as the country’s president, interest in the ASEAN region increased.
One of the reasons for this shift was a re-focus of Argentina’s foreign policy and the aim to acquire new international trade partners in the wake of rising economic volatility in the US and Europe.
Historically, the rapprochement of Argentina to Southeast Asia has been practically zero during Nestor Kirchner’s presidency (2003-2007) as the country was busy enough to reconstruct itself after a severe economic crisis.
Only Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, in power since December 2007, started promoting new international non-traditional partners to mitigate falling the demand for export goods from developed countries.
That way, ASEAN came on the agenda and a number of official visits and trade missions followed. Among the latest were the visit of Hector Timerman, Argentina’s Minister of Foreign Relations, who led several commercial missions to the Philippines and Indonesia in October 2012, and Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s meeting with the Prime Minister of Vietnam, Nguyen Tan Dung, in January 2013.
