Brazil's agribusiness registered a record trade surplus of 49.7 billion U.S. dollars in 2007, the Ministry of Agriculture announced Tuesday.
Exports in the sector reached 58.4 billion U.S. dollars last year, against 8.7 billion U.S. dollars in imports, it said.
The rise in exports has been due to a 12-percent surge in the prices of agribusiness products in the period, apart from the 5.6-percent increase in the trade volume, according to the ministry.
Soybeans led the ranking of exports with 11.38 billion U.S. dollars, up 22.3 percent from 2006, and China purchased 27.7 percent of its soybean exports, it said.
Sales in beef, chicken and pork reached 11.29 billion dollars, up 30.7 percent from the previous year. Chicken presented a particularly remarkable performance in 2007 with an export of 4.2 billion dollars, up 44.3 percent from the 2.9 billion registered in 2006, when the world market took a hard blow as a result of bird flu.
Agricultural Minister Reinhold Stephanes said Brazil will try to open up new markets for its meat exports in countries such as Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, China, the Philippines and in the European Union.
It is also struggling to repair its U.S. and EU markets tarnished by the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, which began to threaten the country's exports three years ago, the minister said.
Source: Xinhua
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