Spensy Pimentel
Reporter - Agência Brasil

Dakar (Senegal) - Brazil and Senegal share common points in their foreign policies, chiefly because both countries currently give priority to strengthening South-South relations. But the trade flows between the two countries have not kept pace. This evaluation was made by the Senegalese President, Abdoulaye Wade. The declarations were made at his meeting on Saturday (15) with the Brazilian mission led by Chancellor Celso Amorim.

Wade told Amorim that the priority on South-South cooperating, including closer ties with Brazil, constitutes an international strategy.

At a work meeting on Sunday (16), Amorim and his Senegalese counterpart, Cheikh Tidiane Gadio, reaffirmed both countries' interest in convening a meeting this year in Brasília of a Brazil/Senegal Joint Commission to discuss the expansion of trade exchanges.

For the director of the Department of Trade Promotion of the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Relations, Mário Vilalva, the two major obstacles to increasing business flows between the two countries lie in the spheres of transportation and export finance.

Translation: David Silberstein