The Superintendency of Banks of the Central Bank of Paraguay announced that, for the month of June, the maximum lending interest rate ceiling for transactions in guaraníes will be 27.11% per year. Rates exceeding this cap will be considered usurious.
This limit represents a slight increase compared to May's ceiling, which stood at 27.05%, but remains below the figure recorded in the same period last year, when the limit was 28.31%. for loans in foreign currency, the Central Bank set the ceiling at 11.20% per year, virtually stable compared to the previous month, which was 11.19%.
The limits remain nearly stable in a scenario of normalization of the Central Bank's benchmark rate, which currently stands at 5.50%, after two consecutive cuts applied by the monetary authority.
The regulation considers compensatory and punitive rates that exceed by 30% the average annual effective rates charged by banks and finance companies on consumer loans to be usurious.
The Monetary Policy Committee (CPM) will continue to closely monitor risks arising from the external environment to assess their implications for the inflation trajectory and adopt, when necessary, the measures that ensure convergence of inflation to the target established within the monetary policy horizon.