A newly appointed minister with 25 years of private-sector experience and a bold ten-million-visitor target is betting that Paraguay’s greatest tourism asset is the one it hasn’t built yet
Global (Tourism Reporter) — There is a particular kind of ambition that announces itself not with caution but with clarity. When Jacinto Santa María Ammatuna walked into the headquarters of Paraguay’s National Secretariat of Tourism — known locally as Senatur — in late April 2026, he did not arrive with a modest five-year plan and a set of incremental targets. He arrived with a vision so sweeping that it silenced the room: Paraguay would go from receiving two million tourists a year to ten million by 2037.
The announcement was not a casual aspiration tossed into a press conference. It was, by all accounts, the centrepiece of a comprehensive strategic pivot that President Santiago Peña had personally commissioned. Peña described the appointment of Santa María as part of a broader effort to strengthen each strategic area of the country, and said the new minister’s experience and commitment would be key to consolidating tourism as a driver of growth, job creation, and Paraguay’s international projection. The message from the Palacio de los López was unmistakable: business as usual was over.
A Minister Built for This Moment
Understanding the scale of what Santa María is attempting requires understanding the man behind the plan. He is the co-founder of Eco Reserva Mbatoví, the first eco-adventure park in Paraguay to be declared of tourist interest by Senatur itself. He has spent more than a quarter of a century working at the intersection of private enterprise and public strategy, accumulating a résumé that reads less like a CV and more like a blueprint for exactly the kind of transformation he is now tasked with delivering.
His career has spanned directorships in industrial and academic institutions, advisory roles at the United Nations Development Programme, coordination of Paraguay’s National Country Strategy Team, and positions in strategic planning at the highest levels of government. He has also lectured in postgraduate programmes and published work in Paraguay, Chile, the United States, and Germany. When he speaks about tourism development, he does so with the fluency of someone who has thought about little else for the better part of three decades.
That depth of experience explains, at least in part, why he was so direct on his first day in office. Upon taking office, Santa María informed his team that the challenge was immense and that failure was not an option. It is the kind of language that ministers rarely use, perhaps because it closes off the retreat. Santa María appears to have chosen it deliberately.
The Problem With Paraguay’s Tourism Story So Far
To appreciate what is being proposed, it is worth pausing on where Paraguay currently stands. The country is landlocked, home to fewer than seven million people, and has for decades sat in the shadow of its neighbours when it comes to international visitor appeal. Brazil has its coastline and carnival. Argentina has Buenos Aires and Patagonia. Bolivia has the Uyuni Salt Flats. Peru has Machu Picchu. Paraguay, in the popular imagination at least, has rather less to shout about.
The numbers bear this out. Paraguay received 3.6 million international visitors in 2025 — comprising just over two million tourists and 1.6 million day-trippers — a 91 per cent increase over the previous year. That growth figure is remarkable, and Santa María is careful to acknowledge it as the foundation on which his ambitions rest. But he is equally candid about what it reveals: that Paraguay, for all its quiet momentum, remains a minor footnote in the itineraries of the world’s 1.52 billion annual travellers.
The minister has been frank about why he believes that is the case. Paraguay, he argues, lacks a tourism icon — something that commands the global imagination in the way Machu Picchu or a major coastline does. It is an honest diagnosis, and one that leads directly to the prescription.
Santa María has identified what he describes as a vicious cycle at the heart of Paraguay’s tourism sector: there are few tourism products, so few people come; there is no investment, and without investment, new products are not created. Breaking that cycle, he believes, requires something more dramatic than incremental improvement. It requires a catalyst.
The Orlando Model: Ambition Meets Blueprint
The catalyst Santa María has in mind is one that will raise eyebrows in some quarters and generate considerable excitement in others. He has pointed repeatedly to Orlando, Florida, as the model that inspires his vision: a city that, despite having no coastline, snowy mountains, or lush jungles, attracts 75 million tourists a year. That success, he argues, was built entirely through investment, technology, and creativity — transforming what was once swampland into the world’s most visited entertainment destination.
Santa María has announced that the government will actively seek foreign investors to come to Paraguay and build state-of-the-art theme parks and high-technology entertainment complexes. He is not speaking in vague terms. He confirmed that the government has already begun talks with the first investors, and has presented the new tourism master plan to the diplomatic corps accredited in Asunción, a move explicitly aimed at internationalising the call for capital.
The minister has been characteristically blunt about the logic. He has asked publicly: if Paraguay had powerfully attractive tourism products, why would people in South America travel all the way to Orlando when they could come to Paraguay instead? It is a question designed to reframe the conversation — to position Paraguay not as a country trying to catch up but as one with the potential to leapfrog.
He has also noted that the idea of developing large-scale parks with foreign capital was not born overnight. He raised it in a newspaper article eleven years ago, and what was once a speculative proposal is now government policy.
The Triple Frontier: A Regional Corridor Waiting to Happen
Perhaps the most immediately compelling component of the strategy concerns the Triple Frontier — the point at which Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina converge at the meeting of the Paraná and Iguazú rivers. Santa María has proposed creating a trinational tourism corridor that would allow visitors to cross between the three countries with the ease of movement one might experience in the European Schengen Area, with fluid and fast transit between Foz de Iguazú, Puerto Iguazú, Presidente Franco, Ciudad del Este, and surrounding towns.
The prize is obvious. More than four million tourists visit Iguazú Falls from the Brazilian and Argentine sides every year, but the vast majority do not cross into Paraguay. The minister’s argument is straightforward: the primary reason they do not cross is that Paraguay currently lacks an offering compelling enough to justify even one night’s stay. Creating that offering — through accommodation, entertainment, dining, and experiences tied to Paraguay’s cultural and natural identity — would convert those day visitors into overnight guests, generating accommodation revenue, food and beverage spend, and a chain of economic value that currently does not exist.
An overnight stay, Santa María has pointed out, is not merely a tourism metric. It is an economic event. It means a bed sold, a meal bought, local produce consumed, a taxi driver paid, a market visited. Multiply that across hundreds of thousands of additional visitors and the cumulative effect on Paraguay’s economy becomes considerable.
The Competitive Advantages Nobody Is Talking About
Santa María’s pitch to foreign investors rests on three structural advantages that Paraguay possesses and that, he argues, its regional competitors cannot match.
The first is Paraguay’s low tax burden. The country applies what is known as the 10-10-10 rule: a ten per cent value-added tax, a ten per cent personal income tax, and a ten per cent corporate earnings tax. In a region where fiscal complexity and corporate tax rates frequently deter long-term investment, Paraguay’s framework is genuinely competitive.
The second advantage is geographic. Paraguay sits at the centre of South America, accessible from every major market on the continent. For investors building entertainment or hospitality infrastructure designed to serve a regional audience, that positioning matters enormously.
The third, and perhaps most striking, is energy. Paraguay generates vast quantities of clean, cheap electricity through its share of the Itaipú and Yacyretá hydroelectric plants — binational projects shared with Brazil and Argentina respectively. For energy-intensive investments such as large entertainment complexes, digital tourism infrastructure, or advanced manufacturing linked to tourism supply chains, cheap and abundant energy is a decisive factor.
These are not soft selling points. They are hard structural advantages, and Santa María has made presenting them to international capital one of his immediate priorities.
Building Proof Before Seeking Scale
Critics might reasonably ask whether Paraguay has the institutional and organizational capacity to deliver on ambitions of this magnitude. The minister’s answer points to recent milestones as definitive evidence.
He has cited the 2025 World Rally Championship debut as proof of what the country can achieve when it sets its mind to a task. Despite initial skepticism, the entire country united behind the event—government, organizers, media, and private sector operating as a single team—and Paraguay was awarded the title of Best Rally of the World on its very first attempt. As the country prepares for the expanded 2026 edition, that victory remains the benchmark for national execution.
The government has also pointed to Paraguay’s successful hosting of the 75th FIFA Congress in 2025, the Odesur Games, and the recent Junior Pan-American Games as evidence of its growing organizational competence. Furthermore, Asunción’s selection over Rio de Janeiro to host the 2031 Pan American Games serves as the ultimate international vote of confidence. The argument is that a country capable of delivering world-class events of this caliber already possesses the infrastructure and institutional “muscle” required for serious tourism development—well beyond what its current visitor numbers might suggest.
Nature, Culture, and the Existing Foundation
For all the talk of theme parks and mega-investments, Santa María has been careful not to dismiss what Paraguay already offers. He has stated that the country has the potential to develop a wide range of tourism products, including nature-based experiences, cultural and innovative proposals, and the use of technology to generate immersive and interactive circuits.
Paraguay’s existing tourism assets are genuinely undervalued on the world stage. The Itaipú Dam — one of the world’s most powerful hydroelectric structures — draws significant visitor interest. The Jesuit Missions of Trinidades and Jesús, granted UNESCO World Heritage status, offer a window into one of the most remarkable chapters in South American colonial history. The Pantanal wetlands, shared with Brazil and Bolivia, represent one of the planet’s great wildlife habitats. Asunción, increasingly confident as a city destination, is developing a hospitality and culinary scene that belies its modest international profile.
On the question of air connectivity — a perennial constraint for landlocked destinations with limited inbound route networks — the minister has taken an unconventional position: airlines follow demand, not the other way around. Build the product, generate the demand, and the airlines will come. It is a view that runs counter to the instinct of most destination marketing organisations, which tend to lobby for new routes before demand fully materialises. Time will tell which approach Paraguay’s geography and investor appetite supports.
The Measure of a Plan
Any honest assessment of what Santa María is proposing must acknowledge the scale of the challenge. Moving from 3.6 million visitors to ten million in just over a decade requires not just investment and political will, but sustained execution across infrastructure, hospitality training, digital marketing, regulatory reform, and international relations. It requires private capital to take a bet on a destination that most of the world cannot yet locate on a map.
Santa María has acknowledged this directly. Paraguay has extraordinary conditions, he has said, but what is needed is determination, coordination, and a clear vision — and the most significant transformations often arise precisely from those who dare to think differently.
It is a persuasive argument from a minister who brings genuine credentials and a coherent strategic logic to the role. The plan is not without risk. But then, neither was Orlando — before someone decided to build something there worth visiting.
Jacinto Santa María Ammatuna was appointed Minister of Paraguay’s National Secretariat of Tourism (Senatur) by President Santiago Peña on 27 April 2026, replacing Angie Duarte.
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