Around 600 Paraguayan lorries carrying soyabeans and their derivatives were held up for almost two weeks at the border with Brazil due to bureaucratic delays, AgriCensus reported on 7 December from Paraguayan press reports.
Paraguayan grain chambers had urged the Brazilian authorities to cut through the red tape, issue permits and increase staff at customs offices along the border, AgriCensus said.
The head of Paraguay’s grain chamber Capeco, Hugo Pastore, said that local exporters had been relying on lorries to export soyabeans, corn and derivatives to Brazil due to the low water levels in the Paraná river.
Brazilian authorities had been asked if convoys of up to 100 lorries could be formed to speed up the process, Pastore said.
Meanwhile, Paraguay’s grain and oilseed crushing chamber Cappro had said in a statement that it had already urged Paraguayan officials to intervene to try and find a solution, AgriCensus said.
Between January and October 2020, Paraguay had exported 6.19M tonnes of soyabeans – a 31% increase compared with the 4.72M tonnes exported in the same period of 2019, according to data from the country’s Central Bank.
The country’s soyabean exports to Brazil had also grown 636.5% year-on-year in the January-October period, reflecting strong Brazilian demand for domestic consumption and crushing due to the huge export volumes sent from Brazil to China.
Brazil had imported a total of 653,100 tonnes of soyabeans from Paraguay over the period – a large increase from the 88,700 tonnes in the same period of 2019.
