Since early December, the Navy has issued bulletins imposing restrictions on vessels entering the country via this route, making arrivals of goods more difficult since the end of the year, the Southern Nation’s Importers Center said.
The impact has been greater because they charge an additional freight fee by limiting ships’ draft, as a kind of compensation for carrying less freight, which makes goods more expensive, said Center for Importers President Ivan Dumot.
Other economic damage, he explained, comes from the slowing down of the turnover rate of imported products when they arrive in the country by this route, amid the river draft conditions mentioned above.
Experts from this official agency estimate that the year 2023 will again be complicated for navigating these channels, especially for January and February, with similar consequences for ships entering.
Weather forecasts for both months indicate that this situation will last at least the first quarter of the year, making imported products even more expensive, Dumot says.
The impact of navigational problems on high commodity prices is helping to further complicate the impact of international inflation on the country, which had negative impacts throughout 2022.
“The imported products that we purchase are more expensive due to high tariffs in their countries of origin, whose markets are also affected by world inflation,” said the specialist.
The problem of the river’s location – he stressed – is aggravated by the exchange rate of the dollar, “which shot up at the end of the year and also made products more expensive”.
Another problem complicating importation is that the stretch of shipping affected by the drought is also used by Argentina and Bolivia, from the Paraná River basin to Paraguay, which was exacerbated because Buenos Aires announced a toll for the portion who runs your government.
The effects of the drought on the Paraguay and Paraná rivers affect 75 percent of the foreign trade that flows through this type of transport, whose ships now pass almost half their cargo and find it difficult to deliver the goods on time.
The so-called Paraguay-Paraná Waterway is key to regional trade in South America, enabling the export and import of cargo from Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay, moving about 19.5 million tons through these waters annually.
rgh/apb