Paraguay

Paraguay: Low Defense Burden, Mid-Range Governance Scores

Paraguay's gross domestic product reached $44.5 billion in 2024, per World Bank World Development Indicators (WDI), with per-capita output of $6,416.10 across a population of roughly 6.9 million the same year. Government debt was 37.8% of GDP in 2026, per IMF World Economic Outlook (WEO) data, and foreign exchange reserves stood at $9.52 billion in 2025, per IMF International Financial Statistics (IFS).

Military expenditure totaled $421.1 million in 2025, according to SIPRI's Military Expenditure Database, equal to 0.876% of GDP on SIPRI's own GDP series for that year — a ratio that should not be checked against the World Bank GDP figure cited above, since the two are separate accountings. The Correlates of War National Material Capabilities (COW NMC) dataset counts 14,000 active personnel as of 2022 and assigns Paraguay a Composite Index of National Capability (CINC) score of 0.00042426863 for that year.

V-Dem's 2025 data put the electoral democracy index at 0.581 and the liberal democracy index at 0.376, with state capacity scoring 0.391 — the lowest of the three governance measures in this dataset for Paraguay. Paraguay's CINC score of 0.00042426863 reflects COW NMC's composite of population, personnel, military spending, and industrial indicators folded into a single measure of relative material capability.

Energy figures from Our World in Data show primary energy use of 0.1858 exajoules in 2023 and electricity generation of 45.35 terawatt-hours in 2025, both recorded independently and not converted against one another here.

Data gaps

Both oil and gas production are listed at zero for 2016 in Our World in Data's series, a reading now roughly a decade old. The milex/GDP figure above is tied to SIPRI's own GDP series, not the World Bank's, and the two must not be divided against each other to produce a new ratio. The 37.8% debt-to-GDP figure cited above is an IMF projection for 2026, not a historical outturn.

Sources: World Bank World Development Indicators; IMF World Economic Outlook; IMF International Financial Statistics; SIPRI Military Expenditure Database; Correlates of War National Material Capabilities; V-Dem v15; Our World in Data (Energy).