The CEOE seals a strategic alliance with the UIP employers’ association in Paraguay

In the context of the official visit by the Secretary of State for Trade, Xiana Méndez, to Paraguay, the President of CEOE International, Marta Blanco, met the Paraguayan Minister of Industry and Trade, Luis Alberto Castiglioni, and the President of the Paraguayan Industrial Union (UIP), Enrique Duarte.

The meeting served as a follow-up to the Paraguayan Minister’s trip to Spain last November, during which a business meeting was held at the CEOE’s head office, and it was opened by its president, Antonio Garamendi.

Paraguay is a country that offers many opportunities to strengthen business cooperation. In this respect, it is important to foster public-private partnerships and the meeting held at the headquarters of the Ministry of Industry and Trade is a good example of this.

The Minister and the President of CEOE International discussed international and regional affairs from the perspective of the two countries and how international commerce and investment are central to business strategies.

From a more bilateral perspective, the Paraguayan minister announced his intention to visit Spain this year, accompanied by a business delegation. Both the IPU and the CEOE will work to ensure that this activity will enhance and materialise the opportunities that are being identified to increase trade and investment between the two countries.

During the course of the event, special mention was also made of the role of regional dialogue between governments and employers through CEIB, where we hope to bolster dialogue with Paraguayan employers.

Bilateral relations: trade and investment

Economic and trading relations between Spain and Paraguay, though consolidated, are still limited due to the small size of the Paraguayan market and its low per capita income. In relative terms, Spain’s share of exports in the Paraguayan market was about 0.96% in 2020 (latest available data), 9% higher than in 2019, while Paraguay’s share in the Spanish market reached 0.03% of the total during the same period.

Spanish exports are fairly diversified, although dominated by industrial products and technology. And in 2021, the following stood out: perfumery, medicines, automobiles, fertilisers and plastics, among others, as well as the health sector, activity in which has increased since the start of the pandemic. For their part, Spanish imports from Paraguay ranked 79th in the ranking of world suppliers (10th among Latin American countries) with 37.1 million euros, a fall of 62.8% compared to 2020, when they were worth 59 million euros. In both cases, this was much lower than the 261 million euros imported from Paraguay in 2013 and the 203 million euros imported in 2017.

Based on the latest official data published by the Central Bank of Paraguay at the end of 2021, the stock of Spanish net investment in Paraguay in 2020 was 801 million dollars, making Spain the leading investor country in Paraguay, followed by the United States, the Netherlands and Brazil. It should be noted that last year Spain was in third place.

Spanish FDI in Paraguay has experienced considerable growth in the last 10 years, reaching 524.8 million euros in 2019, according to data published by the Secretary of State for Trade.  Paraguayan investment in Spain is of little significance, with a cumulative flow of gross non-ETVE investment of 15.3 million euros in the period 1993-2019. Last year the flow of Paraguayan investment in Spain was 109,000 euros and in 2020 it was 556,000 euros.