The Uruguayan government recently welcomed a team of World Bank experts to tour the country as part of a program to promote irrigation investment.

Photo: MGAP

Agriculture minister Tabaré Aguerre told the delegation and a group of local technicians that such investments would help take the agricultural sector to the next level by lifting water restrictions.

"The idea is to prepare an irrigation development project, from water capture to management to the energizing of systems, to build a state policy for the next 10 or 15 years," he said.

"We are convinced that Uruguay has the opportunity to transform a lot of this water that is in surplus and not used in some parts of the year, into productive water in the form of irrigation.

"And we are fully convinced that the traditional agricultural areas of Uruguay - although they have not had irrigation before - are surely going to have earlier demand from private businesspeople."

In December, Uruguay's Ministry of Livestock, Agriculture and Fishing (MGAP) called on grower organizations to present associative and multi-property strategies for water use, in order to establish stability for production.

"We are asking for the contribution of the World Bank in methodological aspects, in the experience that these people have in developing this type of entrepreneurship in the rest of the world," Aguerre said.

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