MEXICO ATTENDS THE 11TH MEETING OF THE HIGH LEVEL GROUP OF THE PACIFIC ALLIANCE

• The High Level Group of the Pacific Alliance held its eleventh meeting in Cali, Colombia.

• The Undersecretaries of Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru discussed the Alliance’s progress towards integration.

The Undersecretaries of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru held their 11th meeting of the High Level Group of the Pacific Alliance on December 19-20 in Cali, Colombia. Following up on the resolutions made at the Cadiz Summit last November, they reviewed the Alliance’s progress in regulating the trade of goods, services and capital; cooperation and the movement of people.

The four countries continued working on trade liberalization and on rules of origin with the goal of concluding the negotiations in the first quarter of 2013. In this round of negotiations, they also made progress on trade facilitation and customs cooperation; technical barriers to trade; sanitary and phytosanitary measures; and services and capital. In addition, the committees on intellectual property, regulatory reform and government procurement began discussions.

The trade agencies presented the progress made by the four countries on their joint efforts to attract investment and expand the trade of the Pacific Alliance, including the establishment of a joint representative office in Istanbul, Turkey.

The High Level Group also heard a report from the Pacific Alliance Business Council, which is comprised of leading businessmen from the four countries.

The Pacific Alliance is made up of Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. It aims to create an area of deep integration; achieve the free movement of goods, services, capital and people; seek more opportunities for growth, development and competitiveness for their economies and a bigger role in the world, particularly the Asia-Pacific. To date, the group includes seven observer countries: Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, New Zealand, Panama, Spain, and Uruguay.

The group represents a potential market of over 200 million people. In 2011, its exports totaled $534 billion dollars and its imports, $529 billion dollars, or 49 percent of total trade in Latin America.

For Mexico, the countries of the Pacific Alliance together are the third largest destination of our total exports, just after the United States and Canada. In 2011, Mexico’s trade with the Pacific Alliance totaled 30 percent of its total trade with Latin America. Also in 2011, our exports to the Alliance totaled nearly 9 billion dollars and imports accounted for just over 3.5 billion dollars.