Milenio: Bolivia Exports More Dollars but Produces Less, Exposing the Paradox Behind Its First-Half ‘Boom’

Bolivia appears to have strengthened its export performance, but the numbers conceal a sharper contradiction: the country earned more while shipping less. Export revenues reached $6.395 billion in the first half of 2026, a 55% increase from the same period in 2025. Yet the physical volume of exports fell 19%, from 4.65 million tonnes to 3.75 million tonnes.

The gap is most visible in mining, which accounts for most of the export increase. Mineral sales abroad climbed from $2.326 billion to $4.452 billion, a 91.4% rise. At the same time, the volume shipped declined from 984,000 tonnes to 867,000 tonnes. The Milenio Foundation’s report attributes the increase to higher international prices for gold, silver, tin and zinc, not to a recovery in Bolivian mining production.

That combination of higher income and lower productive activity pushed the goods trade surplus from $138 million in the first half of 2025 to $1.656 billion in the same period of 2026. The report describes the result as fragile. A correction in international metal prices could sharply reduce export earnings and damage the trade balance, as happened when the commodity price cycle of 2006-2014 reversed.

Hydrocarbons offer a different picture. Gas and gas-derived exports fell 13% in value and 39% in volume, continuing the decline in natural-gas production seen in recent years. Mining has therefore become the almost exclusive source of Bolivia’s export momentum. The increase also helped produce a $783 million current-account surplus in the first quarter of 2026, after several years of continuous deficits, according to Central Bank of Bolivia data cited in the report.