March 18, 2013
Paraguay to raise soy exports in 2013
Paraguay will increase its soy exports in 2013 to as high as nine million tonnes, compared to about four million tonnes last year, as local farms recover from a serious drought.
The growth in output in South America's third-largest soy producer is expected to spur the fastest economic growth in South America.
Corn and wheat will boost the country's total grain crop to 14 million tonnes, spurring a 10% rise in gross domestic product, and reversing a 1.1% contraction in 2012, said Paraguay's Finance Minister, Manuel Ferreira. Soy accounts for 12% of the landlocked nation's GDP. Paraguay aims to boost grain production to 20 million tonnes by 2020 as farmers use government loans to install irrigation systems and expand growing areas, he said.
"We're very vulnerable to changing weather so we're trying to stabilise the agriculture sector through better management of water resources," he said. "We can irrigate a large part of the production. There is a lot of room to grow in agriculture."
Paraguayan farmers plan to sow 1.5 million hectares of corn annually by 2015, boosting output to 7.5 million tonnes from an estimated three million tonnes this year.
