The National Minimum Wage Council (Conasam) faces one of the most tense debates in recent years. Representatives of the business sector reaffirmed their position of strictly applying the current law following the official announcement of a possible modification to the formula used to adjust the minimum wage.
The meeting between the government, employers, and workers ended without an agreement on the adjustment. While union centrals insist on a 22% increase, current regulations establish that the adjustment must be made exclusively based on the accumulated Consumer Price Index (CPI), measured by the Central Bank of Paraguay (BCP). However, the government itself acknowledges that this index does not reflect the social reality of Paraguayan households, which today even resort to credit card financing to cover basic food expenses, since the current minimum wage of 2.9 million guaranis is not enough to cover essential needs.
In fact, the average income of Paraguayans barely reaches 2.7 million guaranis; almost half of the economically active population does not even receive the legal minimum wage, and only about 20% of workers have access to social security.
Representatives of the production, industry, and services sectors argue that the CPI is the only technical mechanism that ensures economic predictability. They maintain that modifying this formula by decree would generate a strong impact on the costs of the formal sector. The Federation of Production, Industry and Commerce (Feprinco) highlights that "a decree cannot be above the law," alluding to the possibility that the adjustment could be defined by a new calculation driven by decree, the details of which have not yet been disclosed.
On the opposite side, discontent among organized workers continues to grow. The unions claim that the inflation measured by the BCP is disconnected from the real cost of public transportation, fuel, and the basic food basket. The union centrals demand a structural reform that raises the minimum wage to at least 3.5 million guaranis. Tension increased after the Authentic Unitary Workers' Central publicly accused the BCP of "manipulating" inflation figures, an allegation that has not been independently corroborated, the indicator that determines the percentage of the wage adjustment.
If the CPI is taken as a reference, the minimum wage would be adjusted by only 50,000 guaranis, an amount considered insufficient given the sharp increase in the prices of basic basket products, especially meat.
Meanwhile, the government is evaluating data from the income and expenditure survey conducted by the National Institute of Statistics, with the aim of modernizing the structure of the family basic basket for the coming years. The final decision could determine the direction of inflation and the stability of the Paraguayan labor market in the short term.
Formal negotiations will advance against the clock in the coming weeks, as Conasam has a deadline of June 30, 2026, to present its final adjustment proposal to the Executive Branch.