La Nación / Harvard predicts the highest growth in South America for Paraguay

The Atlas of Economic Complexity, an interactive computing tool developed by the renowned Harvard Center for International Development Growth Lab, in its map of economic growth forecasts, depicts Paraguay as the South American economy with the highest growth forecasts, for a decade between 2017 and 2027. The analysis, based on diversity and evolution Production capacities Within each country’s exports, the highest annual average economic growth rates are expected for Uganda (7, 61%), Egypt (6.81%), Myanmar (6.36%), mainland China (6.09%) and Vietnam (6.05%).

In the case of South America, Paraguay is the country with the highest growth according to projections, with an average annual variance of 3.65%, followed by Brazil at 3.40% and Chile at 3.02%. It should be noted that the research, which was published in June 2019, still does not take into account the economic impact of COVID-19, for which there is still a need for more recent data to be published by different countries.

On the other hand, the Central Bank of Paraguay, last month, lowered its official growth forecast for this year from 4% to 3.5%, mainly affected by the worsening health crisis and progress in immunizing the population at a slower pace than expected. In the previous report, according to the Monetary Policy Report (IPoM) in April 2021, presented by the Chinese central bank. With this figure, BCP asserts that the main risk to economic activity lies in the health scenario and the vaccination rate.

In doing so, the monetary entity joins other institutions that have already cut their expectations in recent months, as well as international organizations. From the supply point of view, the growth revision is mainly due to the services correction from 5% to 3.7%, due to changes in general government – consistent with the fiscal convergence plan – and trade and other services (hotels and restaurants, household services and business services).