MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Paraguay aims for 10 million tourists by 2037 with megaparks and foreign capital

Paraguay received 3.6 million international visitors in 2025 —2,029,678 tourists and 1,627,516 day-trippers— a 91.24% increase over the previous year

The new minister of Paraguay's National Tourism Secretariat (Senatur), Jacinto Santa María, has announced a plan to turn the country into a regional tourism destination and draw up to 10 million annual visitors by 2037, a target that would almost triple the flow recorded in 2025 and which the official aims to reach by attracting major foreign investment to develop theme parks and megaprojects. Santa María, who took office two weeks ago, laid out the proposal in an interview with the EFE news agency and at his first press conference at the head of the agency.

Paraguay received 3.6 million international visitors in 2025 —2,029,678 tourists and 1,627,516 day-trippers— a 91.24% increase over the previous year. The official considers those figures low relative to the country's potential and attributes them to a historically conservative view of the sector. “There is a vicious circle,” he argued, referring to the link between the shortage of visitors and the lack of modern hotel and communications infrastructure. The strategy, he said, is to create “anchor tourism products” capable of attracting visitors and, on that basis, generating the complementary infrastructure.

Santa María identified three competitive advantages for attracting foreign capital: the country's low tax burden, its geographic position at the center of South America, and the abundance of clean, cheap energy generated by the binational hydroelectric plants of Itaipú —jointly operated with Brazil— and Yacyretá, shared with Argentina. Paraguay applies the so-called “10-10-10 rule,” which combines a 10% value-added tax, a 10% levy on personal income, and a 10% tax on corporate earnings, a framework the minister described as a decisive “fiscal incentive” for investment.

“If we had those powerfully attractive tourism products, why wouldn't people in South America come to Paraguay instead of going to Orlando, for example, which is much further away?” the official asked, referring to the US city that concentrates the world's largest theme parks. The minister recalled that the idea of developing large-scale parks with foreign capital had already been raised by him eleven years ago in an op-ed published in a Paraguayan outlet, and said the government has already begun talks with “the first investors.”

As part of the strategy, Santa María presented the new tourism master plan to the diplomatic corps accredited in Asunción, a move aimed at internationalizing the call for capital. “If we manage to close with them, the parks will have to start being built, and you know that when a park of the size of a Disney or something similar starts being built, there is no turning back,” he said. Paraguay, a landlocked country of fewer than seven million inhabitants, has traditionally relied on Holy Week as the main driver of domestic tourism, according to Senatur data.