Paraguay - Foreign trade

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