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Paraguay Foreign Assistance
Most of Paraguay's foreign assistance came in the form of
concessional loans from multilateral development banks,
particularly the World Bank and the IDB. These sources of
assistance accounted for the high percentage of the country's debt
with official creditors. From 1946 to 1982, the World Bank provided
Paraguay US$1.3 billion, the IDB US$409 million, and United Nations
agencies, US$30 million. Paraguay received no money from the IMF in
the 1980s. Multilateral bank lending went toward energy,
agriculture, transportation, communications, public health
education, rural electrification, and support activities, such as
statistics gathering. In addition, the IDB also made loans to
smaller projects benefiting low-income farmers and small-scale
enterprises in Asunción's large informal sector.
The United States was traditionally the largest bilateral donor
in Paraguay, but in the 1980s Japan and West Germany surpassed the
United States in bilateral economic assistance. From 1946 to 1987,
the United States provided US$212 million to Paraguay, 61 percent
in the form of project-specific funding, 18 percent through the
"Food for Peace" program, and 20 percent for other programs,
including narcotics interdiction. The last year of major United
States funding was 1981. From 1982 to 1987, United States
assistance was under US$12 million. During the 1980s, AID
classified Paraguay as an "advanced developing country" and offered
that as one reason for its declining economic assistance. Other
reasons were political
(see
The United States, ch.
4). Despite the dwindling financial support of AID, the United
States maintained a large Peace Corps volunteer program. The InterAmerican Foundation also remained active in Paraguay.
* * *
After decades of sparse research and publishing on the
Paraguayan economy, in the 1980s there appeared unprecedented
documentation of the rapidly changing economy. Most of the research
and publication efforts inside Paraguay took place at the
Paraguayan Center for Sociological Studies (Centro Paraguayo de
Estudios Sociológicos). This institute published numerous valuable
articles in its journal, Revista paraguaya de sociología.
Outside the Center, the Central Bank published the most
comprehensive data through its Department of Economic Studies,
including the Boletín estadístico (monthly) and Cuentas
nacionales (annual).
One of the most encyclopedic studies on the Paraguayan economy
in the 1980s was Guillermo F. Peroni and Martin Burt's Paraguay:
Laws and Economy. Two more critical essays were Ricardo
Rodríguez Silvero's La deformación estructural: Reflexiones
sobre el desarrollo socio-económico en el Paraguay
contemporáneo and Anibal Miranda's Desarrollo y Pobreza en
Paraguay. The most in-depth book concerning Itaipú was
Itaipú: Dependencia o desarrollo by Ricardo Canese and Luis
Alberto Mauro. As of 1988, there was no book published in the
United States that examined in detail the Paraguayan economy of the
1970s and 1980s. Two of the best journal articles published in the
United States were written by Werner Baer and Melissa Birch:
"Expansion of the Economic Frontier: Paraguayan Growth in the
1970s" and "The International Economic Relations of a Small
Country: The Case of Paraguay."
In general, data on the economy varied greatly, and no single
source was definitive as of 1988. The most reliable data were
produced by the IMF, the World Bank, the IDB, and the Economist
Intelligence Unit. (For further information and complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of December 1988
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