“Exports in May fell for the ninth consecutive month and this time the drop was 31.2 percent,” Teresa Aishemberg, executive secretary of the Uruguayan Exporters Union, told local media.

This drop is mainly explained by lower sales to China, which completed a year of declines in the purchase of meat, seeds, timber and fish, Aishemberg noted.

She described as a constraint the Government’s exchange rate policy with respect to the dollar, which continues to fall here while in other countries the US currency recorded increases in May and in the accumulated balance.

“The exchange difference that was generated last year continues to widen and this worries us because of the relative increase in the price of our products and services compared to the world and the loss of competitiveness that this means,” the businesswoman pointed out.

“Today we are expensive compared to the world and our competitors are arriving with lower prices,” she warned.

She also called to recover and increase exports to China and, at the same time, promote sales to Mercosur, which is a destination for some 400 Uruguayan companies, some 250 of which only export to the regional bloc.

jg/ybc/lam/ool