Brazil and China sealed a $30bn currency swap agreement on Tuesday that is expected to act as a backstop to growing trade between the two countries.

Though the agreement is expected to be of little use in day-to-day trade, the deal will guarantee the flow of Brazil’s growing soy, iron ore and other exports to China and China’s imports of manufactured goods to Brazil regardless of global financial conditions.

“The purpose of this swap is that, independent of the conditions prevailing in the international financial market, we will have $30bn available which would represent eight months of exports from Brazil to China and 10 months of imports to Brazil from China,” said Alexandre Tombini, president of Brazil’s central bank in a press conference on the sidelines of the Brics summit in South Africa. “This is sufficiently large to guarantee normal trade operations.”