Bolsa de Valores de Asuncion: how it works, who runs it, and what issuers must disclose

What this exchange is

The Bolsa de Valores y Productos de Asunción S.A. — universally shortened to BVA — sits in Asunción, Paraguay’s capital, and is the country’s only securities exchange. It was founded in 1977 as a private initiative and carries the ISO 10383 market identifier code XBVA.

Shares and bonds are priced in Paraguayan guaraní (PYG), though dollar-denominated debt is also common.

What actually changes hands here is overwhelmingly debt, not equity. In 2025 roughly 97% of all trading volume was fixed income — government bonds, corporate bonds and certificates of deposit — while shares made up only about 3%.

A reader should understand that the BVA is, in practice, Paraguay’s bond market with a small equity annex attached, not a stock market in the São Paulo or Santiago sense.

Who owns it

The BVA is a private limited company (sociedad anónima) owned by its member brokerage houses, banks and financial institutions. It is not state-owned and not part of any regional exchange group.

Its own shares are not listed on the exchange itself.

The exchange publishes the names of its board of directors and senior management on its website. The chief executive and chair are named there in Spanish; the site does not maintain a parallel English version of the governance pages.

Who regulates it

The BVA is supervised by the Superintendencia de Valores (SIV), the securities and products-market superintendent that sits inside the Banco Central del Paraguay (BCP), the central bank. Its authority comes from Law No. 7572/2025, the Securities and Products Market Law, which unified and modernised Paraguay’s capital-markets rules.

The SIV can license brokers, approve public offerings, require issuers to file periodic reports, suspend trading in a security and sanction market participants. It cannot guarantee the accuracy of what a company files; that responsibility remains with the issuer and its auditors.

Public filings are kept by the SIV and are accessible through the regulator’s website, www.siv.gov.py, and through the exchange’s own disclosure pages at www.bvasa.com.py.

What trades there

The BVA operates markets for company shares, government and corporate debt, investment-fund units and futures. Its main share index is the PDV General Index, which tracks the overall equity market, while the PDV 20 Index follows the twenty most-traded shares.

Both are calculated by the exchange itself.

Companies enter the PDV indices based on trading liquidity and market presence, and the constituent list is reviewed periodically — typically annually — by the exchange. The BVA does not operate a separate junior board for young or small companies; all equity issuers sit on the same main board.

What it takes to list

A company wishing to sell shares on the BVA must be a Paraguayan corporation (sociedad anónima) in good standing, with audited financial statements and a board of directors. The exchange’s listing rules require a minimum share capital and a minimum proportion of shares placed with the public, but the precise thresholds are set out in the BVA’s Reglamento de Listado, which is published only in Spanish on the exchange’s website.

Not published: the exchange’s English-language pages do not state the minimum capital or free-float figures in a form that can be quoted here. The governing statute, Law No. 7572/2025, empowers the SIV to set listing conditions by regulation, and the BVA’s own listing rulebook contains the operative numbers; a reader who needs the exact thresholds should consult the Spanish-language Reglamento de Listado directly.

What companies must tell you

Listed companies must file audited annual financial statements with the SIV and the exchange, and quarterly interim reports. The filing deadlines are set by the SIV and are typically within ninety days of year-end for annual accounts and forty-five days for quarterlies.

All filings are in Spanish; there is no English-language disclosure regime.

A shareholder must notify the SIV and the exchange when its stake crosses 5% of a listed company’s capital, and again at each subsequent 5% threshold. Companies must disclose related-party transactions and the total remuneration of the board, though the rules do not require individual director-by-director pay disclosure.

What the rules do not demand is equally important: there is no requirement for English translations, no requirement for quarterly earnings calls, and no continuous-disclosure obligation for material events beyond the periodic filings.

How trading works

From 12 January 2026 the BVA runs a Nasdaq-powered electronic platform. Electronic pre-trading runs from 10:00 to 11:00 local time, continuous trading from 11:00 to 15:30, and post-trading from 15:30 to 16:00.

A traditional floor session operates from 13:00 to 15:00, and futures trade from 10:00 to 13:00.

Prices are formed by continuous matching of buy and sell orders, with no designated market-makers required to stand ready to buy and sell. The exchange has roughly 250 trading days a year, in line with Paraguayan public holidays.

Price-movement limits and trading halts are set out in the exchange’s operating rules, which are published in Spanish.

How a trade is settled

Since January 2026, clearing, settlement and custody have been separated from trading and assigned to the Caja de Valores del Paraguay (CAVAPY), the central securities depository. CAVAPY stands in the middle of every trade, guaranteeing settlement and keeping the electronic record of who owns what.

Settlement is on a T+2 basis: money and securities change hands two business days after the trade. Securities are held in book-entry form at CAVAPY, meaning the investor’s name appears in the depository’s register rather than on a physical certificate; whether a foreign investor can hold directly in their own name or must use a local nominee depends on the account structure agreed with the local broker.

Short selling, lending and margin

Short selling — betting against a share by selling borrowed stock — is not a functioning part of the BVA equity market. Securities lending is not offered to retail or foreign investors in any practical sense, and margin trading with borrowed money is not generally available through local brokers.

This absence is structural, not accidental. With only a handful of actively traded shares and a market dominated by buy-and-hold bond investors, there is no liquid borrow market to support shorting.

A foreign investor should not expect to hedge a Paraguayan equity position by shorting it locally.

Can a foreigner buy here?

A non-resident can buy Paraguayan securities by opening an account with a local brokerage house that is a member of the BVA. The broker will require identification, proof of address and, in practice, a local tax registration number (RUC) obtained from Paraguay’s tax authority, the SET.

There is no separate foreign-investor registration with the central bank for ordinary portfolio investment.

Dividends paid to non-residents are subject to Paraguayan withholding tax, and capital gains on listed securities are taxed under the general income-tax rules; the exact rates are set by the tax code and should be confirmed with the broker. Repatriation of funds is permitted, but the investor must demonstrate that the money entered through the formal financial system.

An easier route for some foreign investors is to buy Paraguayan exposure through debt instruments listed on other Latin American exchanges or through international funds, since no depositary-receipt programme for BVA-listed shares exists.

What it costs

The BVA charges a listing fee when a company first lists securities, and an annual maintenance fee to remain listed. Both are set out in the exchange’s tariff schedule, published in Spanish on its website; the amounts vary by instrument type and are not stated in English.

Trading costs include a brokerage commission negotiated with the member firm and an exchange fee per transaction. There is no Paraguayan stamp duty or securities-transaction tax on BVA trades.

A reader needing exact figures should consult the BVA’s tariff page or ask a member broker directly.

Where the prices are

Live and delayed prices for BVA-listed securities are published on the exchange’s own website, www.bvasa.com.py, and through the Nasdaq-powered trading platform. The exchange publishes a daily bulletin of closing prices and trading volumes, available on its site in Spanish.

The major international data vendors — Bloomberg, Refinitiv and others — carry only a thin slice of BVA-listed instruments, mostly the most liquid government bonds and a handful of shares. Most small and mid-sized Paraguayan issuers do not appear on any English-language data terminal, which is why English-language coverage of these companies barely exists.