MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Soybeans have become Argentina's main export industry

In spite of the significant recovery of Argentine industry following the massive December 2001 devaluation of the local peso, agriculture commodities and particularly soybeans have become the country's main export.

The soybean and cooking oil industry in 2004 totalled 6.668 billion US dollars of overseas sales, ahead of oil and refined products with 6.271 billion US dollars and 3.650 billion US dollars in grains.

Regarding individual companies, Repsol-YPF leads with 2.700 billion US dollars (4,65% more than in 2003); Cargill figures second with 2.324 billion US dollars and then Bunge (oil & cereals) with 1.806 billion US dollars.

The information from the magazine Prensa Economica covers Argentina's 1.000 main exporting companies, representing 97% of all overseas sales, and the ten leading places belong to the cooking oil industry (soybeans); hydrocarbons and grains, plus a single mining company Minera Alumbrera which exported 683 million US dollars in 2004.

Siderca (steel) (516 million US dollars) and Aluar (aluminium) figure 14 and 20, while the automobile industry performance also increased with Ford's overseas sales almost doubling from 290 to 490 million US dollars figuring 16 in the list. Volkswagen exported 350 million US dollars and ranked 22.

The only chemical company to figure among the top twenty (17) is Dow with exports of 424 million US dollars.