Argentina will soon pay for imports from China in yuan rather than dollars, following in the footsteps of another Latin American giant, Brazil, which made the same decision at the end of March, the Argentine economy minister announced on Wednesday. Sergio Massa.

“Following an agreement with various enterprises, the People’s Bank of China and the central bank of Argentina, we have restructured the instrument of payment of $1.04 billion this month for imports from China,” said Economy Minister Massa, flanked by China’s ambassador to Buenos Aires, Zhu Xiaoli.

Mr. Massa added that it would be possible to “schedule a volume of yuan-denominated imports worth (equal to) one billion dollars from next month, which will replace the use of dollars.”

Abandoning the dollar in trade with China will “improve Argentina’s net (foreign) reserve prospects” and “allow the level of activity, the volume of imports, the pace of trade” between the two countries to be maintained and ” the levels of economic operation that Argentina needs”, according to him.

For his part, Mr. Zhou stressed the importance of this decision in order to “protect and develop global markets and support businesses to use local currencies to settle transactions.”

This announcement comes at a time when the Argentine peso has for days suffered a new spectacular fall against the dollar, as in the parallel, unofficial market the exchange rate is approaching 500 pesos to one dollar, while the official exchange rate is at the level of 227:1, with in other words it lost somewhere around 20% of its value within a week.

The Brazilian government announced at the end of March that it had signed an agreement with China under which trade between the two countries will be conducted in their currencies, the real and the yuan. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva asked during his visit to China in mid-April: “Why should all countries be obliged to do their transactions in dollars?”

China, the world’s second largest economy and a major political rival of the US, has been internationalizing its currency in recent years.

But the dollar still accounted for 42% of currencies used in international trade in April, compared with 33% for the euro, 6% for the British pound, 5% for the Japanese yen and just 2% for the yuan, according to the latest SWIFT international financial messaging system data.