The 16.5% reduction in Argentine beef exports, between May and September this year, gave space for another South American country to advance in its shipments to China. Uruguay now ranks second in this protein exports to the Chinese.
On May 20th, the Argentine government published a measure to limit beef exports by 50%, in order to stabilize the protein prices in the domestic market.
The economist Juan Manuel Garzón, from the Argentine and Latin American Reality Studies Institute of the Mediterranean Foundation, says that most players in the global beef market have expanded their presence in China.
According to Garzón, among the top three in this export ranking, Brazil went from 40% to 46% market share from May to September; Uruguay rose from 11% to 14%; and Argentina, which had 23% of that slice, now has 11%.
Thus, while Argentine shipments decreased 16.5%, Brazil increased 41.6%, Uruguay 22.9% and the United States 6.2%, in the analyzed period.