“This unity between Argentina and Italy is not just an issue that begins today”

Italy, June 1, 2011

The president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, spoke in Rome and invited to invest in Argentina. “The Italian model of development is a model to look at and emulate,” she said, due to the strength of SMEs.

“Relations with Italy, beyond this period of interruption, always had a major flow,” said the President.

“The debt default in 2001 made us fall in our relationship with Italy and the world. In the Italian case, perhaps, was more painful because it is not new that this was the main migratory flow of Argentina,” she said.

The President explained that in Argentina there was a “80% growth of GDP, and much is due not only to exports but to the domestic market development.”

Therefore, said Cristina, “the Italian development model is a model to watch and imitate, is unique in regard to their fundamental support the small and medium enterprises, which represent 50% of exports of Italy”

“We need much, but it would be a very good target, that our SMEs lead or have greater involvement in exporting,” the President concluded.