Chengdu Municipal People's Government donated 20,000 masks to Uruguay in April 2020

On April 28, 2020, the Chinese Embassy in Uruguay reported that the Chengdu Municipal Government had recently provided a donation of 20,000 masks to Uruguay, which was first handed over to the Uruguayan Consulate in Chonqing. The consulate, in turn, would send the donation to Montevideo to help combat COVID-19. On June 8, 2020, the Montevideo Municipal Government agreed to accept the donation via Resolution No. 2159/20. However, on August 19, 2020 – while the Mayor of Montevideo and the Consulate General were corresponding to organize the transfer of the supplies from the Chongqing to Montevideo – a letter between the two revealed (1) that the Government of Uruguay would be responsible for paying costs associated with shipping the donation to Uruguay and (2) an estimated price for the shipping. Then, several days later, the shipping costs increased by over 100%, making the payment too expensive. As a result, on October 5, 2020, the Mayor of Montevideo released a (subsequently approved) resolution, Resolution No. 3559/20, making the previous acceptance of the Chengdu Municipal Government donation void. There is no evidence to suggest the masks ever arrived in Uruguay. Harvard's Mask Diplomacy Dataset estimated the value of the masks themselves at USD 8,000. AidData estimates the masks were worth USD 14,000.

Additional details

1. AidData has estimated the transaction amount for this donation based on price catalogues from the World Health Organization (WHO). Please see the TUFF Methodology for additional details.

Number of official sources

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Number of total sources

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