ROME – Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi will make a visit to Mexico where he will meet with President Enrique Peña Nieto and which will focus on economic issues, Wednesday.
Renzi will leave Rome Tuesday night, bound for Mexico City, where he will arrive early the next morning, confirmed the press office of the Palazzo Chigi, the official state residence of the Italian prime minister.
The meeting with Peña Nieto is scheduled for 1:00 p.m. local time (18:00 GMT), and at 2:00 p.m. both leaders will release a statement to the media.
Wednesday afternoon the Italian prime minister he will travel to New York, where he will speak Thursday at the United Nations headquarters, on a high-level debate on objectives for sustainable development.
As confirmed by the Mexican embassy in Rome, the Renzi visit will be “executive” in nature and will be dominated by economic issues.
Official data shows that Italy is the ninth largest trading partner of Mexico globally, and third among European Union (EU) nations.
Mexico, meanwhile, is the second largest trading partner of Italy in Latin America.
The Mexico-EU Global Agreement gives preferential treatment to trade between the two countries, which in 2015 was $6.7 billion.
Thanks to this agreement, the bilateral trade grew 268.65 percent between 1999 and 2015, and since 1999 1,797 companies have been established in Mexico with Italian capital, distributed across 16 sectors, mainly in Mexico City, Guanajuato, San Luis Potosí and Chihuahua.
Virtually all major Italian companies have a presence in Mexico, including Techint-Tenaris, Enel, Enel Green Power, Barilla, Brembo and Assicurazioni Generali, Pirelli, Ferrero, ENI, FCA, Saipem, Bonatti, Elica, Stevanato and Maccaferri.
Investments remain on the upside and Pirelli recently announced it will invest $200 million for a new plant, in addition to the $600 million already invested in its headquarters in Silao, Guanajuato.
On March 30, Enel Green Power (EGP) confirmed contracts in Mexico for the supply of energy for 15 years, and green certificates for 20 years with three solar power projects with a total installed capacity of almost 1 GW (equivalent to one billion watts).
The company said it will invest nearly $1 billion in the construction of new plants and projects, which open in 2018, and will produce more than 2 TWh (terawatt hours) of renewable energy annually.
In 2015 Enel Green Power announced an investment of $157 million dollars in the East Wind Center, that opened in Oaxaca in February.
Direct Foreign Investment (DFI) of Italy in Mexico from 2000 to September 2015 grew 707.9 percent.
Although lasting only a few hours, Renzi’s visit to Mexico will take place over two years after his predecessor, Enrico Letta visited the country, who became the first Italian head of state to set foot on Mexican soil in nearly a quarter of a century.
A state visit to Mexico by Italian President Sergio Mattarella is scheduled for July.
THE NEWS/JMR
