Paraguay launches 2021-25 transparency, anti-corruption plan

Paraguay’s President Mario Abdo signed a decree on Wednesday that officially launches a multi-year anti-corruption plan.

The 2021-25 government initiative is detailed in a document known in Spanish as the Plan Nacional de Integridad, Transparencia y Anticorrupción (PIN), which establishes the actions that state institutions must take to promote transparency and integrity and combat corruption.

Paraguay’s social cabinet chief Juan Villamayor said authorities had, since 2018, tightened their focus on anti-corruption and that PIN would lead to “concrete action” being taken, state news agency IP reported. 

PIN is based on six pillars: transparency, access to public information and citizen participation; development of the system and culture of integrity; public roles, suitability and merit; control frameworks in public procurement and in internal control and risk systems; state investigative and sanctioning capacity in acts of corruption; and plan communication and documentation. 

Authorities, which launched the plan on Wednesday (pictured), devised it in consultation with civil servants, union bodies, lawmakers, civil society, academia, court officials and US international development agency USAID, among others, the government’s transparency unit ENIT said in a statement.

Paraguay is ranked 137th out of 198 jurisdictions in non-profit Transparency International’s 2019 Corruption Perceptions Index, a global indicator of public sector corruption.

The country dropped five places in 2019, according to the organization. 

Elsewhere in South America, Argentina is ranked at 66, Bolivia 123, Brazil 106, Chile 26, Colombia 96, Ecuador 93, Guyana 85, Peru 101, Uruguay 21 and Venezuela 173. Globally, the best ranked country is New Zealand.