Paraguay is the institutional opportunity one layer below Panama, and in 2026 it re-engineered its front door. On 28 April 2026 the government launched the Paraguay Investor Pass, a direct route to permanent residency that skips the old two-year temporary phase, stacked on the lowest tax burden in the southern cone. For anyone mapping where a currency windfall could deploy, Paraguay pairs a faster residency door with a territorial system that taxes foreign income at zero.

The Paraguay Investor Pass and 2026 residency routes

The Investor Pass launched under Resolution 0283/2026 and rests on Article 46 of Migration Law 6984/2022, which exempts a qualifying investor from the temporary-residency step. Four tracks qualify: $70,000 in production with a business plan and 5 jobs, $200,000 in stock held 2 years, $200,000 in commercial real estate, or $150,000 in a government-approved tourism project. Source of funds must be documented within 180 days. Slower paths remain open, including the rentista route at roughly $1,300 a month and ordinary permanent residency with no investment proof. Citizenship follows a 3-year statutory minimum. Paraguay logged 47,000 residence-permit applications in 2025, and the first quarter of 2026 ran 85 percent ahead of a year earlier.

Paraguay tax: the ten-ten-ten territorial system

Paraguay runs the lowest headline tax burden in the southern cone on a territorial basis. The shorthand is ten-ten-ten: 10 percent corporate income tax, 10 percent personal income tax at the top, and 10 percent value-added tax. Foreign-source income, across every category, is taxed at zero. There is no wealth tax, no inheritance tax, and no gift tax. Paraguay holds no double-tax treaty with the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, or Canada, but the territorial rule does most of the work, since there is usually no Paraguay tax to credit on a foreign portfolio.

Property, open capital account, and cheap power

Foreign nationals buy and own Paraguay property outright, with no residency requirement. A single 50-kilometre border-security zone bars only Brazilian, Argentine, and Bolivian buyers, so US, UK, EU, Australian, and Canadian nationals purchase freely. Paraguay runs no exchange controls and no capital controls. Asuncion apartments run roughly $1,500 to $2,500 per square metre, Encarnacion sits far below that, and Chaco cattle land trades from $500 a hectare. The structural anchor is power: near-total hydropower from the Itaipu and Yacyreta dams gives Paraguay some of the cheapest electricity on the planet, drawing more than $1.1 billion into crypto and AI computing since 2021.

Why the timing works

The macro backs the window. The IMF projects real GDP growth near 4.2 percent in 2026 after a 2025 close to 6.6 percent. Moody's lifted Paraguay to investment grade for the first time in July 2024, S&P added a second investment-grade rating in December 2025, and President Santiago Pena, an economist in office since 2023, is actively courting foreign capital. The door is wider and the screening at it is tighter, both at once.

The full IR-011 report breaks down every residency track, the property and banking mechanics, and the complete tax stack. Read the full Paraguay country analysis.