On an official visit to Russia, Bolivian President Luis Arce Catacora held a very positive private meeting today with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the first time they had met in person. Following their private meeting, delegations from both nations met in an expanded format to discuss the range of possibilities for expanding their bilateral cooperation. President Arce is a special invited guest at the June 5-8 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), and Bolivia is a candidate to join the BRICS. Arce attended the 2023 BRICS summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, and expects to attend this year’s summit in Kazan, Russia. He’ll be speaking at one of today’s SPIEF panels on Bolivia’s successful Productive Economic-Social Communitarian model, in place since 2006, which aims to industrialize Bolivia.
Prior to meeting with Putin, Arce met with Alexey Likhachev, CEO of Rosatom, which is collaborating with Bolivia’s Nuclear Energy Agency to build the state-of-the art Nuclear Technology Research and Development Center in the city of El Alto. Aside from advancements in nuclear energy, Arce and Putin also discussed Bolivia’s lithium industry and many other opportunities for bilateral cooperation, the Bolivian Information Agency reported today.
President Arce told Putin, “We’re happy to be here with you in your hometown city and share our experiences and also our projects, our dreams, and, perhaps by joining hands, we can make them become reality.” As the Kremlin website reported, Putin greeted Arce warmly and expressed his confidence that the Bolivian leader would make a substantial contribution to the SPIEF, given his training as an economist and having been his nation’s Finance Minister prior to becoming President.
