Yearbook 2009
Paraguay. According to countryaah, President Fernando Lugo was increasingly employed during the year by scandals in his past. Above all, it was revealed during the year that he has no less than three extra-marital children that he had when he was still a bishop. The case was given a special profile because Lugo went for election on a program of moral upheaval, and Catholicism has a strong position in the country. The hopes of the opposition, especially the Colorado Party, which lost a presidential election in April 2008 for the first time in 61 years, that the scandal would damage confidence in Lugo came partly to shame after the president himself went out and apologized for his behavior. However, the opposition was active in its opposition to the government in Congress, including the issue of legal and economic reform in the wake of the financial crisis. See ABBREVIATIONFINDER for abbreviation PY which stands for the nation of Paraguay.
At the beginning of the year, President Lugo’s promised land reform was set in motion. The landless peasants in Paraguay threatened with new land occupations because the reform work has not started in a year. There were international implications in this, as many of the large landowners who will have their property expropriated are Brazilian soybeans living in Paraguay, and Brazil’s Foreign Minister Celso Amorim warned that violence in the Paraguayan countryside might increase.
Borders and surface. – After the Chaco War the borders between Bolivia and Paraguay were fixed (October 1938) in order to assign most of the disputed territory to Paraguay; a recent map measurement has given Paraguay, within the new borders, an area of 406,752 square kilometers.
Population. – In 1945 it was calculated at 1,182,877 residents, That is 2.9 per sq. Km. On the same date the population of the capital, Assunción, amounted to 134,025 residents, and that of the other major cities was: Coronel Oviedo 33,098, Villarrica 31,081, Jesús yTrinidad 23,677, Caazapá. 19.953, Caraguatay 18.907, Concepción 16.487, Encarciación 16.078.
Economic resources. – The cultivation of cotton, greatly favored by the government, covered an area of 350,000 ha in 1946-47, with a product of 38,000 tons; in the same agricultural year on an area of 62,500 ha. sugar cane yielded 16,000 t. of sugar. Among other important crops, that of tobacco, on 7000 ha. on average in recent years, it has yielded 10,000 tons, of which half have been exported; that of ilex paraguaryensis (of which 70,000 ha. are planted) gave 17,600 t in 1943. of yerba mate ; that of petit – grain reached 284,000 kg. in 1945, equal to three quarters of the world product. The extraction from the quebracho of the tanning extract was, in 1943, of 38,500 t. Breeding remains fundamental, of which an estimate in 1944 gave the following figures: 3,187,400 cattle, 145,000 sheep and 59,000 goats. Meat production was 183,000 q. In 1943, of which 95% were exported.
Commerce. – Foreign trade has been active in recent years, as shown in the following table.
Finance. – The financial statements data are shown below:
A monetary and banking reform was implemented between October 1943 and September 1944, with the enactment: a) of the monetary law of 5 October 1943, which replaced the old peso with a new currency, the guaraní, of 100 céntimos, by arranging the exchange rate at the rate of one guaraní for every 100 pesos and un- anchored the new monetary meter from the Argentine peso, entrusting the Banco della Repubblica with the task of temporarily keeping its value fixed in relation to the currencies having the greatest influence on the country’s trade balance; b) of the law of 8 September 1944, which replaced the Banco della Repubblica with a new state-based issuing institution, the Banco del Paraguay; c) of the law of 27 September 1944, which regulated the activity of credit companies operating in the country, subjecting them to the control of the central bank. The gold standard of guaraní communicated to the International Monetary Fund is gr. 0.287595 fine and corresponds to the official exchange rate with the dollar of 3.09 guaranis per dollar. The free dollar rate at the end of November 1948 was 3.74 guaranis per dollar. Foreign exchange control, reintroduced in February 1941 and exercised by the Bank of Paraguay, was further tightened in the course of 1947. The civil war also led to a significant increase in circulation, which went from 28.8 million at the end of December 1946 to 45 million. as of June 30, 1948. The Bank of Paraguay’s gold and foreign exchange reserves rose to 20.1 million at the end of November 1948, having reached a peak of 38.9 million in November 1946.