Guatemalan bill promotes a new model for road construction

Statement from Guatemala's congress.

[Machine translation]

The Congress of the Republic, through initiative 5431, the general road infrastructure law , fundamentally seeks to generate a new model for the construction of highways in Guatemala and its approval will allow the construction of more than 22 thousand additional kilometers of road infrastructure in 15 years. that would generate more than 44 thousand additional formal jobs per year.

The initiative that was presented in 2018 by the Foundation for the Development of Guatemala ( Fundesa ) and with the legislative support of several deputies who acted as speakers, has a favorable opinion from the Commission on Economy and Foreign Trade, currently chaired by the deputy Julio Enrique Montano Méndez, from the Unionist bloc and has been known in the first debate in the plenary session of the Congress of the Republic.

Fundesa, in its expository analysis, points out that Guatemala is one of the countries in the world that invests the least in public infrastructure, only 1.08% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). From 1985 to 2013, the growth of the road network was 200 kilometers per year and to date the capacity to build additional kilometers has been very little.

"If we continue at the same rate and do not modify the legal scheme, it will take us 107 years to reach the rate of meters per inhabitant," the organization warns.

The bill proposes a new modality of payment contracts for availability and indicators for the construction, maintenance and operation of the infrastructure. Payments start until construction of the highway has been completed, Fundesa said.

Novel and controversial

The novelty of initiative 5431 and perhaps somewhat controversial is the proposal to create the Superintendency of Road Infrastructure (Sivial), a technical, professional institution that will be dedicated to long-term planning and conducting feasibility studies, bidding, acquisition of the right of way, adjudication, construction, administration, operation, maintenance and supervision of highways.

In this regard, the union and workers of the General Directorate of Roads (DGC), described at the time of privatization of the highways with the creation of Sivial and therefore they held a peaceful demonstration to show their disagreement.

However, Fundesa, the entity that supports this initiative, has indicated that it does not seek to privatize any public highway but what it fundamentally seeks, in addition to modernizing road construction, to avoid corruption.

Similarly, it clarifies that Sivial will be a technical body of the Ministry of Communications, Infrastructure and Housing (Micivi), with functional, economic, financial, technical and administrative independence and, with its own resources, Fundesa said.