Record of agroindustrial exports in Argentina

The agro-industrial complexes of the Argentine Republic continue to stimulate the external accounts of the national economy. Among the chains of barley, sunflower, corn, soybeans and wheat, 52.5 million tons were exported in the first half of the year, the highest volume on record for the January-June period, as reported by INDEC.

In relation to the corn complex, with an increase in export volume of 17% to 20.1 million tons, it has not only touched a record in volume but it has also been very close to number 1 in export agro-industrial complexes, being surpassed only by the soybean complex with shipments of 20.6 Mt. Thus, the share of the corn complex in the country’s total exports reached a maximum of 31% in the first half of the year, just one percentage point below the complex’s share soybean. These two agro-industrial chains represent 63% of the total export volume of the Argentine Republic.

The wheat complex, meanwhile, achieved a 19% advance in the volume of shipments, thus exceeding 9 million tons, also a record for the first half of the year. Participation in the total thus reached 14%, recovering 2 percentage points with respect to the mark of the previous year but still behind the 16% it touched in 2018 and 15% in 2017.

For its part, the barley complex, whose dispatches have fallen by 31% compared to the first half of the previous year, greatly affected by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic in the demand for industrial products that use this crop as an input, while that the dispatches of the sunflower complex fell 27%.

Regarding the star of Argentine foreign trade, the soybean complex, shipments in volume fell 1% to 20.6 Mt compared to the previous year, being 5% below the average of the last five years. Another important difference between soy and corn is found here, since while the corn chain has doubled the volume of its shipments in the last five years, going from 10 Mt in the 1st half of 2015 to more than 20 Mt in 2020, the soybean complex has stagnated around 20 Mt without being able to repeat the 25 Mt mark it achieved in the period January-June 2016.

Among the five agribusiness complexes selected, 80% of the total volume of Argentine exports in the first half of the year was explained, a stable participation in relation to the mark of the previous year. If we turn our gaze to the value of these offices, we have that the 5 chains jointly explained 50% of the total exports of the Argentine Republic between January and June 2020, the highest ratio in at least 7 years. This participation, in fact, is 6 percentage points above that registered in the same period of the previous year and even exceeds that reached in the first half of 2016, when the soybean complex had its best year.

The set of the five agro-industrial chains generated a foreign exchange income of US $ 13,631 million dollars in the first half of the current year, practically equalizing the US $ 13,705 million that was exported of all the other goods and services that Argentina sold abroad between January and June 2020.