During the second pre-consultation meeting in Guatemala, the team and the proposed methodology to conduct the Cultural and Spiritual Impact Study of the "Escobal" mining right in the Xinka People was accepted.
As a result of a protective action filed by the environmental organization Calas, the Constitutional Court (CC) ordered in September 2018, to carry out through the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM), a community consultation in the area of operations of the mine, in El Escobal, in the municipality of San Rafael Las Flores, department of Santa Rosa.
In the context of the process of the resumption of operations of the San Rafael Mine, the first pre-consultation meeting was held and it was agreed to conduct a study of the spiritual and cultural impact of the mining right on the Xinka indigenous people.
Following a protective action filed by the environmental organization Calas, the Constitutional Court (CC) ordered in September 2018, to carry out through the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM), a community consultation in the area of operations of the mine, in El Escobal, in the municipality of San Rafael Las Flores, department of Santa Rosa.
Empresa Tomza Guatemala S.A. reported that in Nicaragua the government of President Daniel Ortega illegally expropriated and confiscated the company's assets, which together amount to $4 million in investments.
The expropriation process took several years. Tomza executives explained that in 2015 they were granted the permits for the construction of a property located in the municipality of Tipitapa, department of Managua.
A few weeks before the new magistrates of the Constitutional Court take office in Guatemala, the business sector is asking that the new members of the highest court advocate for a real rule of law and provide legal certainty to investments.
In recent years, Guatemala's Constitutional Court (CC) has gained prominence in the country's economic sphere, as its rulings have affected different investments that were already operating locally.
After the Constitutional Court decided to keep the "Extracción Minera Fénix" project suspended, the private sector is asking the authorities to start the community consultation process as soon as possible, in an objective and clear way.
The operations of the mine located in the department of Izabal were suspended since July 2019 as a result of a legal appeal filed by a group of neighbors, who argued that the community consultation process for the operation of the mining project had not been exhausted.
The Constitutional Court decided to keep the "Extracción Minera Fénix" project, located in the department of Izabal, suspended and ordered the community consultation process to be carried out within 18 months.
The Guatemalan Ministry of Energy and Mines decided to revoke the license it had granted in early 2020 to the Rocja Pontilá hydroelectric project, in Coban, Alta Verapaz.
Because the current legal framework is ineffective, Guatemalan entrepreneurs in the food sector are asking the government to draft a new law that would criminalize smuggling and also consider it a matter of national security.
Directives of the Guatemalan Chamber of Food and Beverages (CGAB) assure that the current Decree 58-90 "Law Against Fraud and Contraband" is obsolete and does not allow for direct and frontal combat against contraband.
Arguing that the requirements established by law to issue a license were not met, the authorities in Guatemala decided to suspend the environmental permit for the Rocja Pontila Central hydroelectric project.
In Guatemala, a group of deputies filed an unconstitutionality action against the ministerial agreement approving the Rocja Pontila hydroelectric project.
The authorization for the hydroelectric plant, owned by the Pontila Integrated Development Project and planned to be built on the Icbolay River in Alta Verapaz, was issued on January 13, 2020.
The legal appeal that the congressmen who make up the National Unity of Hope (Une) party presented to the Constitutional Court (CC), argues that Ministerial Agreement 019-2020 of the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM) violates seven articles of the Constitution, including 1, 3, 12, 44, 66, 97 and 154.
Alejandro Giammattei, Guatemala's new president, is hosting a country with weak institutions, legal uncertainty and a business sector that is asking for a less "hostile" environment for new investments.
To the denouncements made in recent months by businessmen from Guatemala and Nicaragua, is added that of a Honduran union, which denounces the invasion of 3,400 manzanas of productive land.
For the Guatemalan business sector, the decision by Congress to vote against the bill granting the concession to rehabilitate and operate the Escuintla-Puerto Quetzal highway "sends a negative message to potential investors."
The first positions emerge after learning that the Congress of the Republic buried the road project to rehabilitate and administer the highway Escuintla-Puerto Quetzal with toll collection, which would be granted in concession to the Consorcio Autopistas de Guatemala, under the format of Public-Private Partnership.
In Guatemala, a group of residents of San Pedro Carchá asked the Constitutional Court to suspend Renace's operations, arguing that there was no community consultation prior to the development of the project.
On October 23, a public hearing was held in the country's capital in which the Constitutional Court heard the positions of the interested parties.
Because the area of stolen land in Guatemala has grown from about 10,000 hectares in the 1990s to 164,000 in 2018, losses in agricultural production caused by this phenomenon reached nearly $650 million last year.
The Chamber of Agriculture (Camagro) estimates that only in 2018, invasions of private property, mainly agricultural production farms, generated a negative impact equivalent to 0.6% of Gross Domestic Product.