The official visit of the Executive Branch to Taiwan, concluded last week, resulted in a series of commercial and cooperation agreements ranging from chicken meat exports to the creation of a bilateral chamber of commerce. The delegation, composed of around 50 companies and representatives of the main productive guilds, was the largest ever sent by the Paraguayan private sector to the Asian island, according to the Minister of Industry and Commerce (MIC), Marco Riquelme.
The main advance was Taiwan's sanitary authorization to import Paraguayan chicken meat. The Taiwanese market currently imports US$ 350 million in chicken per year, and the Paraguayan poultry sector hopes to capture a significant share of that volume. Blanca Ceuppens, president of Pechugón, stated that the first in-person negotiations with Taiwanese importers have already taken place and that the first shipments should leave in the coming weeks. The goal is to raise exports from 7,000 tons in 2025 to 10,000 tons this year.
Another notable agreement was the sale of carbon credits. The Paraguayan company Atenil signed a contract with Taiwanese ADATA Technology Co. for the commercialization of credits generated from emission reductions. Riquelme explained that Taiwan taxes greenhouse gas emissions and that local companies can now offset these emissions by purchasing Paraguayan credits. The market potential is over 5 million tons of credits, equivalent to about US$ 100,000 per year.
In the clean energy area, Heliotec formed a partnership with Taiwanese companies to set up a solar panel assembly plant in Paraguay. Meanwhile, Master Transportation Bus Manufacturing Ltd committed to opening an operating unit at the Taiwan-Paraguay Industrial Park in Minga Guazú.
The business guilds that integrated the delegation also signed an agreement to create the Taiwan-Paraguay Chamber of Commerce, in addition to a memorandum with the Chinese International Economic Cooperation Association (CIECA), a Taiwanese public-private entity focused on industrial and commercial promotion. Enrique Duarte, president of the Industrial Union of Paraguay (UIP), highlighted that, for the first time, the Taiwanese private sector demonstrated real interest in doing business with Paraguay.
At the governmental level, the two countries signed an agreement to establish a binational company that will build a data center for artificial intelligence (AI) in three stages. President Santiago Peña compared the initiative to the works of the Itaipu binational, which placed Paraguay at the forefront of hydroelectric generation, and said he hopes the data center will do the same in the global race for AI computing data centers.