With a great display of cameras, lights and reporters, the military and police achieved the incredible feat of capturing 6,000 kilos of chicken smuggled through Ciudad del Este but which are actually products of Argentine origin. As a coup before the end of the year holidays, the display of photos and coverage is disproportionate in relation to the “achievement” of the police-military machine.
The capture means barely 0.03% of the contraband that annually punishes the Paraguayan poultry sector, which supports an invasion of almost 20,000 tons of chicken of Argentine origin every year, while between last year and so far, some 30 farms have already closed. poultry due to the massive smuggling of eggs.
History repeats itself ad infinitum. A combination of low prices in Argentina and the absolute lack of border controls determine that the market is filled with products that are offered at a much lower cost than those of local origin.
A third element that threatens the local industry is the gradual increase in the price of balanced products due to the drought that has made the raw material for its production scarce and skyrocketed its costs.
This triple combination, smuggling, non-existent border controls and more expensive inputs has made poultry farmers go through a 2022 of dark forecasts. Many of them have been decapitalized by the flood of Argentine products.
Thus, an industry that had managed to develop vigorously accompanying a market in constant growth is facing factors that go beyond the vicissitudes of the weather or the changing market. It is a victim, fundamentally, of the ineptness and complicity of border officials, many of whom accumulate fortunes favoring smuggling without caring about the enormous damage they cause to the country’s economy.
This is a more chargeable debt to a government that does not budge to see how entire sectors of the economy – fruit growers, horticulturists, poultry farmers and even small-sized ranchers – sink due to uncontrolled smuggling that fills the streets with products that, in the case of the poultry sector, it will never be known whether or not they have maintained the cold chain that prevents the introduction of bacteria and diseases.
It is in smuggling where the country shows its most depressing third world face.
