Argentine president greets Italian business mission

(AGI) Rome, May 17 - Italian business has returned to Buenos Aires after 12 years of isolation with a visit by the Italian Undersecretary for Development Ivan Scalfarotto. As he began his trip on Tuesday he told AGI that, "the three major presidential candidates, Macri, Scioli and Massa, are also Italian citizens. The winner and current president, Mauricio Macri, has an Italian passport. The Italian community numbers 907,000 people and over 100,000 Argentine citizens were born in Italy." He said it is a friendly country with which to re-establish relations and open new economic and business frontiers. He is meeting institutional, political and economic leaders, starting with President Macri. He is accompanied by 80 companies and representatives from the worlds of banking, finance, research and culture. "It is a system mission after the scouting mission by Prime Minister Renzi, the first to be received by Macri," said Mr Scalfarotto. "We preceded Hollande and Obama. After his mission and the presence of Minister Martina at Macri's swearing in, Minister Franceschini came to Buenos Aires and now, well ahead of schedule, comes the MISE (Ministry of Economic Development) with business people. This will be followed by other high-level political and institutional missions." As with Iran, Italy's interest in a country or region is pursued with missions that are coordinated, accompanied by companies, banks, insurance companies, and universities. "It is a system on the move: in addition to the 80 companies there will be bank and business delegations, CDP, SACE, Simest, ENIT, and a number of universities - a total of 130 people. In short, we are ready to invest in Argentina and with Argentina." The high-level nature of the mission is demonstrated by the fact that he will be received by the president, ignoring the etiquette that says meetings should only be between counterparts. "After all we are going in force, motivated and with all the right credentials: SACE has reopened to sovereign risk so we have a 700 million-euro credit line to support Italian exports and contracts in the country. And we will sign an agreement with Banco de la Nacion to facilitate transactions for 50 million euros for businesses investing in Argentina." The agreements due to be closed will follow four lines: infrastructure, agriculture and food, green and automotive. "For infrastructure, a sector in which we have always been present in Argentina in the past, we want to cooperate with the new presidency which intends to innovate in its infrastructure starting from links with the north; therefore airports, ports, roads and metro systems. In the food industry, Argentina now wants to become the food supermarket of the world: we can help them in agronomy but also in processing and packaging. There is also the issue of renewable energy, because Argentina by size and location is an ideal place and has set a target of 8 percent of clean energy by 2017 and 20 percent by 2020. We are leaders in this area and there will be many points of contact." (AGI) . .