ICBC's Argentina Branch contributes donation of 3,500 sets of protective clothing to first batch of medical supplies to Argentina in March 2020 (linked to #91387)

On March 17, 2020 – at a meeting between the Chinese Ambassador to Argentina, Zou Xiaoli, and the President of Argentina, Alberto Fernández – the Chinese Embassy committed a batch of supplies to the Argentine Government to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. The supplies were to be granted by a group of organizations consisting primarily of Chinese government institutions and state-owned enterprises. The entire batch included the following supplies: 5,000 sets of protective clothing, 66,000 N95 masks, 130,000 medical masks, 2,000 goggles, 5,000 isolation suits, 20,000 pairs of gloves, 2,500 reagents (tests), 550 hand-held forehead thermometers, and 3 sets of temperature monitoring equipment. The group of donors included the following organizations: the Hangzhou Municipal People's Government; the Xiaoshan District People's Government; the People's Government of Louta Town, (in the Xiaoshan District, Hangzhou Municipality); the China Shenzhen Mammoth Foundation; the BGI Group; the Chinese Embassy in Argentina; the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), Argentina Branch; Bank of China, Buenos Aires Branch; COFCO Argentina Branch; China Communications Group, Argentina Branch; National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm); Huawei Argentina; Goldwind Technology, Argentina Branch; and the Argentina-China Trade and Investment Promotion Association. Of the total donation, the ICBC branch in Argentina provided 3,500 sets of Dupont Tryvek brand protective clothing. The materials granted by each donor arrived on different dates. The materials provided by ICBC Argentina were handed over on March 26, 2020, per a document from ICBC Argentina notifying Argentine authorities of the donation. The suits were handed over first to the Ministry of Health, which was to subsequently hand them over to the National Health Emergency Directorate (DINESA, Dirección Nacional de Emergencias Sanitarias).

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. 2. It is assumed that the donation described in the Chinese Embassy Tweet and Sina's article on ICBC's contributions to Argentina during the pandemic is the one that is part of the first batch of medical supplies. ICBC Argentina is listed as a donor by the Chinese Embassy, and given the lack of evidence of other PPE (rather than cash) donated by ICBC Argentina that could be ICBC Argentina's contribution to the first batch, it seems likely the 3,500 sets of medical clothes referenced in Sina's article is the contribution. References to the donation being coordinated by the Embassy and the donation being provided to the Argentine Ministry of Health in the Sina article also indicate that this is the case. The donation also arrived shortly after (March 26th) the batch was committed. 3. The Chinese word for the kind of article donated by ICBC Argentina is "套防护服", which appears in both the Sina and Chinese Embassy articles. It is translated in this set of linked projects as "sets of protective clothing". This is separate from "件隔离服", which is translated in this set of linked projects as "isolation suits", of which 1754 were donated by the Xiaoshan district government (see project #93456), 1275 were assumed to be donated by COFCO Argentina (see project #93455), and none were donated by ICBC Argentina. 套防护服 were also assumed to be donated by Bank of China, Buenos Aires branch (see project #93427). This distinction has no bearing on the estimated transaction amount, however, as Harvard's Mask Diplomacy dataset records the per-unit cost for both types of suit as about 15 USD. 4. This project is linked to Project ID#91387, which itself links to the contributions of all other donors that contributed to the first batch of supplies committed on March 17, 2020. The linked package (#74) will also show all associated projects.

Number of official sources

4

Number of total sources

6