Paraguay Company & Shareholder Directory

Analysis

What this data actually tells you about Paraguay

Paraguay’s economy accelerated sharply in 2025, with real GDP growth reaching 6.6%, well above earlier projections and up from the roughly 4% pace analysts expected at the start of the year, driven by strong private consumption and investment. The Central Bank forecasts a more moderate but still solid 4.2% expansion for 2026. Inflation closed 2025 at 3.1%, down from 3.8% in 2024 and below the BCP’s own 3.6% estimate, comfortably inside the bank’s target range. GDP per capita stood at approximately $6,640 in 2024 in nominal terms (roughly $16,300 on a purchasing-power-parity basis), with per-capita income having grown at an average 2.4% annually between 2004 and 2024. The national currency is the Paraguayan guaraní (PYG). Structurally, Paraguay remains one of the world’s great agro-export economies: soybeans and oilseeds alone generated roughly $3.85 billion in exports in 2024, and beef exports reached about $1.6 billion in the first eleven months of 2024 on roughly 320,000 tonnes shipped. A genuinely distinctive structural feature is hydroelectricity: Paraguay derives nearly all of its domestic electricity from the binational Itaipú (shared with Brazil) and Yacyretá (shared with Argentina) dams, consumes only a fraction of its entitled share, and exports the surplus, making it one of the largest exporters of clean electricity per capita in the world. In 2024, Moody’s upgraded Paraguay’s sovereign credit rating to investment grade. Counterparties verify a specific counterparty’s current sectoral exposure to agro-export or hydroelectric revenue streams directly.

Paraguay is a founding member of Mercosur (alongside Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay), which anchors its regional trade relationships; Brazil and Argentina are its dominant formal trading partners, while significant volumes of consumer goods are re-exported informally toward Brazil through the Ciudad del Este trade hub. The country markets itself explicitly as a low-tax investment destination: corporate income tax is a flat 10% on Paraguayan-source income, capital and profit repatriation is unrestricted, and the maquila (in-bond, export-manufacturing) regime allows up to 100% foreign ownership with duty exemptions on imported inputs and machinery. The maquila sector has grown rapidly: exports under the regime exceeded $1.1 billion in 2024 (up roughly 22% year-on-year) with about 30,000 jobs tied to the sector; more than 300 companies operate under the program, with Brazilian capital — an estimated 70% of installed capital — the dominant foreign investor group. Net FDI inflows were $931 million in 2024 (a 15% year-on-year increase), with total inward FDI stock at $10.395 billion at end-2024, equivalent to about 2.47% of GDP that year. Real estate, commerce, transport and telecommunications were cited by REDIEX/state agencies as the sectors drawing the broadest new wave of foreign interest in 2024-2025, and Paraguay together with Bolivia recorded a 40% rise in FDI inflows in 2025 per UNCTAD. Counterparties verify a specific counterparty’s current tax status and foreign-ownership structure directly.

Paraguay’s population was estimated at about 7.8 million in 2025. The labor market showed clear improvement through 2025: unemployment fell to 5.6% in Q1 2025, its lowest level since 2017, as the employed population grew to 2.91 million people. Informality, however, remains structurally high: 62.5% of employed people were classified as working informally in 2024 according to Paraguay’s National Statistics Institute (INE), with roughly 1.51 million workers in the informal sector as of Q1 2025 — a burden that falls disproportionately on women and young workers. On the political front, Santiago Peña won the April 2023 presidential election and took office in August 2023; his government has pursued the investment-grade rating achieved in 2024 and a renegotiation of the Itaipú Treaty’s Annex C (governing energy-sale terms with Brazil), a process opened in August 2023 around the treaty’s 50th anniversary. Two distinctive, currently relevant and factually dated issues deserve neutral note: first, the Ciudad del Este/tri-border area has long been identified by regional authorities as a major contraband and money-laundering node — Brazilian authorities have estimated over $6 billion a year in illicit funds moving through the area; Paraguay is not, as of 2024-2025, listed by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) among jurisdictions under increased monitoring, its last full FATF/GAFILAT mutual evaluation having been conducted in 2022. Second, Paraguay is the only country in South America, and one of about 12 worldwide, to maintain formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan rather than the People’s Republic of China (relations date to July 1957); Paraguayan exports to Taiwan reached about $342 million in 2025 (up nearly 50% year-on-year), though the arrangement means Paraguay’s soy and beef cannot be sold directly into mainland China. Counterparties verify a specific counterparty’s current labor-formality status and Taiwan/China-market-access exposure directly.