Looking at the main UN Comtrade weapon categories, countries in Latin America almost exclusively reported exports of ammunition (52% of all reported regional exports) and sporting and hunting shotguns and rifles (47%). Data from the region’s trading partners provides a different picture, however, with pistols and revolvers and ammunition each accounting for about 38% of all imports reported to originate from Latin American countries (see Figure 10). It is unclear whether these discrepancies are due to certain transfers being under-reported, miscategorized, or categorized differently by Latin American states and their partners.
Military firearms represented less than 1% (0.5%) of the region’s small arms exports during the period under review. Only Colombia (USD 11 million), Guyana (USD 2.2 million), and Chile (USD 520,000) reported significant exports of military firearms, while Suriname (USD 2.9 million), Brazil (USD 2.1 million), and Colombia (USD 940,000) also stood out as exporters of these weapons based on the data submitted by their trading partners.
On the other hand, military firearms represented about 10% of the small arms imports reported by Latin American countries—which is consistent with the partner data, and substantially higher than the global figure of 5.6%. This places military firearms as the fourth most imported small arms category to the region after pistols and revolvers (40%), ammunition (27%), and sporting and hunting shotguns and rifles (just above 10%) (see Figure 11). These figures suggest that military firearms are imported in relatively significant proportions by the region when compared with the trends observed in the rest of the world, keeping in mind that the region’s overall imports are relatively small in scale from a global perspective, as noted above.
Among the 15 Latin American states that reported imports of military firearms during the period 2019–24, the top five were Brazil (USD 68 million), Colombia (USD 18 million), Mexico (USD 11 million), El Salvador (USD 5.4 million), and Honduras (USD 3.3 million). Brazil’s imports may increase further in coming years in light of the government’s 2024 announcement that it intends to acquire 33,910 new 5.56 mm rifles worth BRL 401 million (USD 79 million) for national security agencies (Viana, 2024). Partner data suggests a different picture, however, with Mexico (USD 75 million), Brazil (USD 24 million), Colombia (USD 5.3 million), Ecuador (USD 5.1 million), and Argentina (USD 4.5 million) emerging as the top five among the region’s 16 countries to which military firearms were exported during the study period.
| < Previous | NEXT PAGE > |