With Más Comercio in Fray Bentos, Mayor Levratto called for transforming productive potential into opportunities

Fray Bentos experienced two special days in August. While the historic Anglo neighborhood welcomed Más Comercio 2025, the Uruguay XXI program that travels the country bringing export tools to the people, Innovatech, the digital fair that sought to bring technological transformation to MSMEs, took place in parallel. Together, the two initiatives put Río Negro at the center of the conversation on innovation, internationalization, and a productive future.

Mayor Guillermo Levratto did not hesitate to emphasize the importance of Más Comercio's arrival in the department. “Río Negro has a particularity: we need to transform our outlook; we have very low collective self-esteem. These types of initiatives, which generate innovation and work in companies with a medium- and long-term vision, are relevant to us. Our lives depend on these things being consolidated and strengthened.”

A program that responds to local challenges

Levratto recalled that Río Negro is a department with a strong export vocation, but one that faces a paradox: it contributes to the national Gross Domestic Product through large companies and yet suffers from high unemployment rates.

“We are a highly wealthy department with a productive vocation, but this has not yet been reflected in the actual training of our people,” he said.

Faced with this diagnosis, Más Comercio presented itself as a concrete opportunity with workshops to learn the first steps of exporting, personalized mentoring to organize strategies, and the support of specialists who help companies think about how to make the international leap.

For the mayor, the key is to join forces. "It is vital to work and generate the best synergies with the private sector, with the capacities installed in the territory. We must prepare our people and tie all the value chains of production together with training," he said.

Looking to the future, Levratto highlighted that Río Negro has an important role to play on a national scale thanks to its forestry and grain production and its logistical location. The challenge, he said, is to take it one step further. “It is important to work in this area with private companies, offering the best of the public sector to generate employment and link it to the productive vocation of our department,” he said.

Thus, in a territory that combines industrial tradition with new generations of entrepreneurs, the arrival of Más Comercio 2025 made it clear that internationalization can also be a response to the social and economic challenges of the interior.