Narrative
Full Description
Project narrative
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 (testing kits), 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 International, 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. The materials granted by each donor arrived on different dates. On April 2, 2020, COFCO Argentina's contribution was handed over to the Argentine Ministry of Health: 1275 disposable medical suits. The suits were Dupont brand, 275 of which were the Tyvek 500 model and 1000 of which were the Tychem 2000 model.
Staff comments
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. This project is linked to Record 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. It is assumed that the donation of 1,275 suits by COFCO referenced in the Chinese Embassy's 4/3/2020 tweet are COFCO's contribution to the first batch of supplies donated. This is given the timing, the recipient (Ministry of Health), and similarities in reporting about this project and others that are confirmed to be part of the first batch donation. 3. It is assumed that the 1275 suits that are considered part of this donation are the suits referenced by the phrase "件隔离服", which is translated as "isolation suits". This is distinct from the articles donated by ICBC Argentina and Bank of China Buenos Aires (see projects #93425 and #93427), which are assumed to be "套防护服," translated as "protective clothing" or "protective suits." 套防护服 is listed as a separate type of medical supply in the Chinese Embassy source published on March 18. It is also possible that COFCO Argentina donated a mixture of 件隔离服 and 套防护服 suits. This issue warrants further investigation; however, Harvard's Mask Diplomacy dataset estimates the cost of both 件隔离服 and 套防护服 to be USD 15 per suit, and thus transaction amounts are unaffected for this project, as well as projects #93425 and #93427. 4. Part of COFCO's contribution may have gone to the Federal Police of Argentina in addition to Argentina's Ministry of Health (see Record ID#93991). However, there is insufficient evidence to add Federal Police of Argentina as a recipient on Record ID#93455.