MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

FDI in Uruguay has soared in last five years and reached 1.6 billion USD in 2010

The pulp industry has become one of the main recipients for FDI

Foreign direct investment, FDI, in Uruguay during 2010 reached 1.627 billion US dollars which represents a 29% increase over 2009 and puts the country among the top six FDI recipients in South America and eighth in the region, according to the latest report from the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, ECLAC.

“In the second half of this decade FDI in Uruguay has grown significantly: while from 2000 to 2005 annual FDI averaged 390 million USD, the average from 2006 to 2010 soared to 1.5bn annually”, said the report adding that in terms of new investments and fusion, the pulp and paper industry has become one of the most dynamic.

ECLAC points out that at the start of 2011 “an agreement materialized which will be the major single private foreign investment in Uruguay, 1.9 billion US dollars for the construction of a new pulp mill along the coast of the River Plate”.

The investors are the Finnish-Swede company Stora Enso in association with Chile’s Arauco. Several other outstanding projects are in the pipeline mostly in the mining industry involving iron ore and granite.

The ECLAC report on FDI in Latin America and the Caribbean released this week points out that the region attracted 113 billion US dollars last year which represents a 40% increase over the previous year. South America is the sub-region of the world where FID most increased, having received 85 billion USD, which is 76% of the total and represents an expansion of 56% compared to 2009.