MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Cartes and Rousseff to open vital supply power line for Paraguay's capital built with Mercosur funds
Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff will inaugurate on Tuesday in Paraguay next to his peer Horacio Cartes a high voltage transmission line from the world's largest operational hydroelectric dam Itaipú to metropolitan Asuncion, capital of the landlocked country and which was financed with Mercosur funds. Read full article
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Disclaimer & comment rulesTime to get some multinationals in or perhaps some multilatinas in to set up manufacturing to take advantage of cheap power and cheap labour and a market that imports cheap manufactures from China.
Oct 28th, 2013 - 08:51 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Or even better. EXPORT.
Agree. But dont forget that Parsguay is landlocked and its exports have to have free passage through Argentina or Brazil who can apply a tourniquet at any time. So they have to box clever
Oct 29th, 2013 - 03:06 am - Link - Report abuse 0@2 Really? What's wrong with going west? It's true that there would be a need to traverse part of Bolivia. But then Bolivia would be faced by Paraguay on one side and Chile and Peru on the other. Together with international law that would require it to facilitate Paraguay's access to the sea.
Oct 29th, 2013 - 11:01 am - Link - Report abuse 0Paraguay is a small poor country, but, with '*90%* of its electric power from the Itaipú dam, and a second Yaciretá, not so large with Argentina' there should be no excuse for power shortages.
Oct 29th, 2013 - 11:35 am - Link - Report abuse 0The Itaipu hydroelectric scheme is the biggest in the whole world - bigger even than the Three Gorges Dam in China.
Wiki: 'In 2008 the plant generated a record 94.68 TWh, supplying 90% of the electricity consumed by Paraguay and 19% of all the energy consumed by Brazil.
Since the output capacity of the Paraguayan generators far exceeds the load in Paraguay, most of their production is exported directly to the Brazilian side, from where two 600 kV HVDC lines, each approximately 800 km long, carry the majority of the energy to the São Paulo/Rio de Janeiro region.'
Paraguay has huge amounts of non-carbon-polluting energy on its doorstep.
To have insufficient power means that it has suffered from a long history of bad leadership, bad management, and big-brother economic dominance from its neighbours.
@2 Conq I think that idea is a pipe dream. First Paraguay fought a bloody war with Bolivia eight decades ago which has no means been forgotten. Echoes of the War of the Pacific between Bolivia, Chile and Peru and its terretorial claims still rumble on. I am not sure if the rail connection through Corumba to the Pacific ports still exists. The last I heard it was handling only about 250 tons of frieght daily
Oct 29th, 2013 - 01:35 pm - Link - Report abuse 0@5 Really? Eight decades ago, Britain was at war with Germany, Japan, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria. Perhaps you're suggesting that the 130,000 killed, from both sides, is more important than the 383,800 the UK and its colonies lost. The 416,800 that the United States lost. The 14 million the Soviet Union lost. And that's only a few of the figures. Total deaths are estimated to be between 60 and 85 million from both sides. The “Chaco War” pales into insignificance. Besides, seems to me that Bolivia started it (Pitiantuta Lake Incident) and got thrashed. Perhaps Bolivia should be more reasonable!
Oct 29th, 2013 - 02:45 pm - Link - Report abuse 0@Geoff That it not bad leadership, it's just that the ultimate Paraguayan elite dream is to have Itaipu to work for them at the expense of Brazilians. Itaipu = Malvinas.
Oct 29th, 2013 - 03:52 pm - Link - Report abuse 0They will steal Itaipu in like 30-40 years with full latin american support and Brazilian submissive applause. Wait and see. The stupid dictators who build this should burn in hell, Itaipu was an error.
@ “perhaps you're suggesting...” How the hell did did you manage to deduce that from my post or why. I lost two great uncles on the Somme and another relative on the Murmansk convoys in WW2. Well thats only three, an insignificant number against your figures which you may dismiss as just a minor statistic to be dismissed with a wave of your hand
Oct 29th, 2013 - 04:26 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Well those three guys do matter to me
Now perhaps we can get back on topic
Not true. Itaipu is a link between Brazil and Paraguay. The Brazil without South America is nothing. We need more of Paraguay than you can imagine.
Oct 29th, 2013 - 04:30 pm - Link - Report abuse 0https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSYtuUK9ECw
@Brasileiro It's not that we don't need Paraguay and Paraguayans, it's just that building Itaipu caused too much headaches for Brazilians and it will be worse in future.
Oct 29th, 2013 - 04:54 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Math/Bras.
Oct 29th, 2013 - 05:30 pm - Link - Report abuse 0The problem is not that it was built largely with Brasilian resources, largely by Brasil, and that the energy goes about 90% to Brasil .. no, the problem I was referring to is that the energy infrastructure, substations, etc never really got developed and kept state of the art within Paraguay.
The export-sale of much of Paraguay's '30%' to Brasil could easily have kept the lights on in PA, if the infrastructure was in place to distribute effectively and constantly the '30%'.
This would have needed leadership, technical/economic/political management and a constant re-framing dialogue with Brasil as both countries developed their relative energy needs.
It failed.
[But - by the same token - Brasil suffers from exactly the same thing, and blacked-out cities are the frequent reminder.]
No, Paraguay seems to have a new 'bit between its teeth' and should be encouraged by ALL its neighbours to use this window of opportunity wisely, effectively and rapidly.
In different ways, in a fully operating Mercosur, when one develops ALL will benefit.
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