PARAGUAY – Paraguay plans to modernize its regulatory framework and strengthen its government policies designed to move towards the new age economy with a loan of $90 million approved by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).
The IDB loan of $90 million has a repayment term of 20 years, a grace period of five and a half years, and an interest rate based on LIBOR.
This program aims to consolidate public policies reformed designed to encourage access to digital technology by citizens and the private sector, as well as promoting digital transformation of public sector services.
In this sense, the development of the national information technology and communications plan will be supported. This plan will feature a variety of initiatives involving the digital economy and promotion of information technologies, from supply-oriented policies aimed at expanding broadband coverage to demand-related policies linked to information technology competitiveness and accessibility, as well as electronic government initiatives.
This project will also support analysis of gender in the appropriation of digital technologies and a pilot plan will be designed and carried out to collect disaggregated data by gender on access to and use of information technology.
The reforms planned will be transversal and are aimed at overcoming regulatory and institutional limitations to achieve a substantial improvement in the economy’s productivity by digitizing it. The program will benefit 61 percent (the percentage of Internet users) of the country’s more than seven million people and 20 percent (the percentage with Internet access) of the country’s more than two million households, which will enjoy higher quality of public and private digital services with the national information technology and communications plan.
It is also expected that companies located in the same geographic area as 88 percent of the population covered by 4G networks benefit from improvements in government digital services.
Likewise, companies located in the same geographic area as 88 percent of the population covered by 4G networks are expected to benefit from improvements in the provision of digital government services.