Parana-Paraguay Waterway

The 3,400 kilometer hidrovia that gives landlocked Paraguay and Bolivia an outlet to the Atlantic.

Overview

Pushed convoys of twenty to thirty barges run soy, maize and fuels downriver from Paraguayan and Bolivian terminals past Rosario, whose crushing plants form the world's largest soy oil and meal export complex, to the Plata estuary ports. For Paraguay, the river is the difference between commodity access and dependence on neighbors' railways. Drought, like the record lows of 2023 that slashed drafts, and unresolved dredging cost-sharing among the riparian states, cap the system's reliability. It is South America's quietly essential freight corridor.