In Shanghai yesterday, on the first leg of her six-day trip to China, Honduran President Xiomara Castro met with Dilma Rousseff, the president of the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB), and formally requested to join the Bank. She told Rousseff, who was President of Brazil when the BRICS formed the bank in 2014, that she would like to be able to “count on all the possibilities to find mechanisms that will allow us to develop our economy and to find permanent allies that will allow us to offer a different quality of life to our people,” Telesur reported her as saying. She added that in Honduras, “we’ve been forced to live with models imposed on us which many times have led to the creation of more poverty and more misery.”
A tweet issued by the Honduran government’s press office yesterday reported that Rousseff “received [Castro’s] formal request that Honduras join that organization.” It also indicated that in the next few days, the government will be sending a technical mission to Shanghai “to begin the process.” In its own tweet, the NDB wrote that “NDB President Dilma Rousseff warmly welcomed President Castro and reaffirmed our commitment to promoting sustainable development and international cooperation.” There are nice photos of Rousseff warmly greeting Castro.
Castro will be seeking ways to deepen her country’s bilateral cooperation with China. Honduras urgently needs investment in infrastructure as well as scientific and technological cooperation to help advance Honduras’s industrial and economic development. Citing Xinhua, Argentina’s Telam news agency quoted her saying that “the Honduran people admire China’s development achievements, especially in poverty alleviation. To fight for the welfare of our people is a common goal of Honduras and China.”
