Paraguay's foreign trade is typical for an agricultural country, but the re-export trade on the black market is the country's largest foreign exchange earner. Over a third of Paraguay's reported commodity export returns comes from oil seeds (34%), while another 9.1% comes from cotton. Other exports include meat (8.3%), leather (6.0%), wood and plywood (5.5%), and vegetable oil (4.8%).
In 2000 Paraguay's imports were distributed among the following categories:
Consumer goods | 25.0% |
Food | 10.1% |
Fuels | 13.4% |
Industrial supplies | 23.3% |
Machinery | 18.2% |
Transportation | 9.9% |
Other | 0.1% |
Principal trading partners in 2000 (in millions of US dollars) were as follows:
COUNTRY | EXPORTS | IMPORTS | BALANCE |
Brazil | 337 | 538 | -201 |
Uruguay | 123 | 82 | 41 |
Argentina | 94 | 512 | -418 |
Netherlands | 62 | 15 | 47 |
Chile | 50 | 36 | 14 |
United States | 34 | 160 | -126 |
Italy | 30 | 50 | -20 |
China (inc. Hong Kong) | 11 | 269 | -258 |
Germany | 7 | 64 | -57 |
Japan | 3 | 103 | -100 |
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