Former Mercosur parliamentarian and engineer Ricardo Canese launched harsh criticism of President Santiago Peña's energy policy, accusing the government of planning to grant million-dollar subsidies to electro-intensive companies — such as cryptocurrency mining operations and hydrogen industries — at the expense of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) and the Paraguayan population as a whole.
Based on official data from ANDE and the Social Security Institute (IPS), Canese demonstrated that domestic companies generate 433 times more jobs per megawatt (MW) than the foreign firms the government seeks to benefit. According to reports sent to the National Congress, electro-intensive industries generate only 1.58 permanent jobs per MW. With a contracted demand of 943.9 MW at the start of 2026, this amounts to roughly 1,491 jobs across approximately 50 such companies.
In contrast, the rest of the country's companies — where MSMEs predominate — sustain 3,295,697 employed people using a peak demand of 4,808 MW, resulting in an average of 685 jobs per MW.
To illustrate what he considers an inversion of priorities, Canese turned to a football analogy. "The coach of any football team in the country — even more so if it is the national team — would never reward a striker who scores only one goal in an entire year and would leave on the bench someone who scores more than 100 goals a year," he said. "In football we are serious. A coach would never make such a mistake. Santiago Peña, on the other hand, makes worse decisions and some unconditional supporters or interested parties applaud."
The engineer questioned the presidential decrees that grant 15-year contracts with subsidized rates to electro-intensive multinationals, with prices set between 30 and 44 dollars per MWh. Meanwhile, the national productive sector and ordinary citizens are left paying higher rates and subject to constant adjustments.
Canese dismissed as "empty rhetoric" the argument that these corporations serve as an "anchor project" for the country's industrialization, stating that the strategy merely conceals a loss to public funds. He also denounced that the cheap energy from Paraguayan hydroelectric plants will be hoarded by companies that "never helped pay the debts of the binational dams."
Given this scenario, the former parliamentarian is demanding that decrees 5,306, 5,307, 5,860 and 5,861/2026 — which were halted following strong pressure from ANDE unions — be definitively revoked by the Executive. As a technical alternative, Canese proposes that electro-intensive companies wishing to operate in Paraguay pay the real technical cost calculated in decree 7,551/2017, which ranges between 76 and 83 dollars per MWh, or take advantage of Law No. 7,599/2025 on non-conventional renewable energies to self-generate their own electricity.
"It is said that EIEs are efficient companies; so let them demonstrate their efficiency and generate electricity for themselves at a lower cost than ANDE's," the engineer concluded.