Paraguay all set to keep ruling party in presidency

Bloomberg

With Paraguay’s economy booming, this Sunday’s elections are less about policies and more about the candidates and their parties.
In terms of growth, this landlocked country — roughly the size of California — is one of the few bright spots in Latin America in recent years. Barring an upset, Mario Abdo Benitez, a 46-year old former senator whose father was the secretary of long-serving dictator Alfredo Stroessner, looks set to retain the presidency for the conservative Colorado party.
Recent polls put him well ahead of Efrain Alegre, a former minister backed by the Alianza Ganar, an unlikely alliance of right-wingers and leftists.
The winner will inherit a $30 billion economy that’s expected to chalk up its sixth straight year of growth, with the central bank forecasting a 4.5 percent expansion this year. Since its debut on global debt markets in 2013, Paraguay has sold almost $3.5 billion in bonds, with an average yield of 4.97 percent, compared with the emerging market average of 5.82 percent. Its impressive growth rates, however, have done little to budge its high levels of poverty, with just over a quarter of the country’s 6.9 million people living below the poverty line.
Policy-wise, there’s little to choose between the two presidential candidates. Both have pledged to fight endemic corruption by overhauling an opaque judicial system, while spending more on education and healthcare. Both also say they can pay for it by doing a better job of collecting the country’s low taxes.
While Abdo Benitez has said he will borrow to boost social spending, Alegre says there’s no need to take on debt when new tobacco taxes could raise as much as $800 million.