Mexico leads in manufacturing exports; Brazil, in primary products
Mexico led manufacturing exports in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2021, while Brazil ranked first in exports of primary products.
On the one hand, Mexico exported primary products for a customs value of US$112,399 million and manufactured products for US$372,006 million.
Consequently, of Mexico’s total product exports, primary products accounted for 23.2 percent and manufactured goods for 76.8 percent.
On the other hand, Brazilian exports of primary products amounted to 201.256 billion dollars and those corresponding to the manufacturing sector totaled 74.248 billion dollars.
Exportaciones de productos primarios y manufacturados y participación en el total de exportaciones, 2021[A] a Exports of primary and manufactured products, and share of total exports, 2021[A] a
Thus, the former accounted for 73.1% of total external sales in Brazil and the latter for the remaining 26.9%.
According to LatAmGrowth, Latin America’s regional integration and domestic market growth are expected to generate increased trade and cross-border transactions that will require additional logistics support.
Container volume growth in Latin America has outpaced that of the United States: the 2009-2019 Compound Annual Growth Rate for Latin America was 4.9%, compared to 4.0% for the United States, according to the EIU.
In addition, gross merchandise value, or the total value of goods sold by online retailers, is expected to grow about twice as fast in Latin America as in the United States from 2020 to 2030, according to Lazard.
Manufacturing exports
While total exports of primary products from Latin America and the Caribbean were $621.079 billion in 2021, regional external sales of manufactured goods totaled $525.462 billion.
To take into account: the share of primary exports in total exports corresponds to the participation rate of primary exports in total annual exports, which indicates the relative weight of exports that put direct pressure on the renewable and non-renewable natural resources of each country.
This rate is calculated from two real series: primary exports deflated and total exports deflated by a United Nations index of unit values of manufactured exports reported by the countries and aggregated for the region by ECLAC.
Thus, the share of primary exports in total exports, measured on series at constant 2010 prices, minimizes the effect of changes in relative prices between exported commodities and manufactured products.
