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Uganda asks China to buy African agricultural products to cut trade deficit

  • President Yoweri Museveni tells Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi trade between African nations is unsustainable
  • China is the continent’s largest trading partner and lender, but imports mostly its oil and minerals
Africa has a surplus of agricultural products, Uganda’s leader says. Photo: Shutterstock
Africa has a surplus of agricultural products, Uganda’s leader says. Photo: Shutterstock
African countries want China to open up its markets to the continent’s agricultural products, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni told top Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi after Beijing vowed to boost agricultural trade with the United States.
In a meeting with Yang in Uganda, Museveni said an increasing number of African
 countries wanted to sell to the lucrative Chinese market.
He said Africa had a surplus of agricultural products despite exporting to Europe and the US, partly because trade between African countries remained low.
“Africa’s 54 countries have come together through market integration in blocs such as Comesa [Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa] that are not sustainable,” Museveni said. “The surplus of production needs another intercontinental market and an external market like China to come in.”

China is Africa’s largest trading partner, having surpassed the US in 2009. Africa’s trade with China was worth US$204 billion last year, according to figures from China’s Ministry of Commerce.

China is also the continent’s largest lender, having advanced more than US$143 billion between 2000 and 2017 to African countries for building motorways, power dams and railways, according to figures from the China Africa Research Initiative at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.
Museveni said China was interested in importing some aquatic products from Uganda, such as the Nile perch fish, which he said had high demand globally.
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With China exporting far more to the continent than it imports from it, African nations are aiming to restructure the trading relationship to narrow their trade deficit by working out what Chinese consumers want and how to get it to them.

China’s imports of African goods are dominated by natural resources such as crude oil, copper, cobalt, iron ore, diamonds, gold and titanium, which it buys to meet its industrial and manufacturing needs. In return, Africa imports machinery, electronics and manufactured consumer goods.

The call from Museveni came after China and the US reached an interim deal to resolve aspects of their protracted trade war. US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has said that, under the deal, China had agreed to buy US$80 billion in American agricultural products over two years.
China has not confirmed the figure, but the deal is being watched closely by China’s other trading partners. Since the dispute with the US began in July last year, Beijing has diversified its agricultural product suppliers to include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Germany, New Zealand and Spain.
China’s agricultural trade with Africa increased from US$650 million in 2000 to US$6.92 billion in 2018, Chinese Minister of Agriculture Han Changfu said this month. Han said he hoped that the figure would reach US$10 billion in the next decade.

Museveni said in the meeting with Yang that Beijing had “supported the continent’s prosperity through trade”, and that the memorandum of understanding he had signed last year with Chinese President Xi Jinping had “intensified the relationship” between their countries. A pipeline being constructed to Tanzania, to connect Uganda’s oil fields to the Indian Ocean, is being funded partly by Chinese investment, along with new industrial parks.

Yang said China would work with Uganda to implement the agreements reached by their respective heads of state and the outcomes of the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation.

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He said China would help Uganda to grow its economy, increase trade between the two countries, and build industrial parks and infrastructure. Beijing would continue to fund projects through the Belt and Road Initiative, its transcontinental infrastructure investment strategy, and through Uganda’s development plan Uganda Vision 2040, without providing details.
After Uganda, Yang will continue his African tour by visiting Congo-Brazzaville. The tiny oil-dependent central African nation recently fell into debt distress when global oil prices dropped, forcing Beijing to restructure its loans to unlock a bailout by the International Monetary Fund.
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Yang will then visit the West African nation of Senegal, where Beijing is funding large infrastructure projects.

Several other leading Chinese diplomats have made trips to Africa this year, including Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who visited South Africa in October. Last week, Ji Bingxuan, vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress – the permanent body of China’s legislature – led a group of officials visiting Congo-Brazzaville.

Source: SCMP

Posted on 20/12/2019 at 16:00 in African, agricultural products, asks, buy, China alert, cut, trade deficit, Uganda, Uncategorized   |  RSS feed |   Reply   |   Trackback URL

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