Placing us in the Latin American context

The budget resources destined to the Social Expenditure have experimented a sustained growth during the decade of the 90’s in Paraguay, especially the expenditures destined to education, and in a lesser degree those destined to health and other social expenditures. Since 2000, however, the tendency is decreasing if we value the amounts in constant guaranies 1

The gaps of coverage that the country currently has in terms of access to basic social services are still large. This may be due, on the one hand, to the fact that the levels of disbursement were not adequate and are quite under the average of the countries in the region.2 On the other hand, an integral policy of social investment 3was not developed. This is the reason why there is a great disparity in the size of the gaps. For example, the Net Rate of Registration in Basic School Education is approximately 90% while the coverage of drinking water is just 55%.

For comparative purposes, we took the 1999 CEPAL data.
Paraguay destined an average of US$140 per capita to attend to the rights of the citizens related to the access of social services, while in Latin America the average was of US$ 696 per inhabitant.

1 Constant values are used to prevent inflation from distorting the calculations.