By Nicole mendoza

The Guatemalan Institute of Tourism (Inguat) announced that more than 60 thousand visitors will arrive in the early days of April.
All this would generate foreign exchange about 25 million, announced Maruja Acevedo, deputy director of tourism agency in that country.

Many visitors arrive in the country from Guatemala Central America, southern Mexico, the U.S. and Europe. Thus foreign tourism will grow by 6% compared to 56 thousand 700 visits Guatemala attracted in the same season last year, however, or even exceed 61 000 a week more in 2010.

By Mirna Ortiz

Otto Perez Molina, President of the country of Guatemala, took oath from the economist Miguel Gutierrez, as the new head of the Superintendency of Tax Administration (SAT).

Before that it was Rudy Villeda who was in charge of the financial institution. He resigned the post in February with the aim that the incoming administration would appoint a new cabinet in all instances, including the SAT.

By Susana Lima

On March 24th, the summit of Central American presidents will take place in Guatemala, to which will assist the president of Panama, Ricardo Martinelli, who rejected the decriminalization of drugs as a means to combat drug trafficking, as his Foreign Minister informed, Roberto Henriquez.

Henriquez said that the position of Panama for the summit is not to agree with the benefits of decriminalization, a position shared by several countries in the region. The summit was convened to analyze and discuss alternatives in the fight against drug trafficking.

By Luisa Marquez

The Guatemalan government will try, on a number of fronts, to discuss its proposal to decriminalize drug use with U.S. officials.

The vice president of the country, Roxana Baldetti, said Monday that her country will insist on the need to legalize drugs as a solution to the wave of violence that is produced by drugs in the region and the few results that were obtained in combatting it.

For his part, President Otto Perez said he will talk about his proposal for legal reform to the U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano during a visit that will take place within a week in Guatemala.

Chancellor Harold Caballeros, who traveled to Washington yesterday and will meet with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said that the President's intention is to provoke debate on decriminalization in Latin America, but emphasized that the Guatemalan Head of State is not planning an immediate reform.

We must be clear that the President is not saying he´s going to legalize drugs in Guatemala, but he is saying that he feels that there should be a hemispheric debate on this topic. It is a process that will last at least a decade, but the important thing is to start at some point. He is thinking that there must be an alternative to all this death and cost of money in combating drug trafficking, he said.

Although Perez said he would not ask its Latin American counterparts to set an early position on the issue, he did reveal that he will ask the Presidents of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, and Mexico, Felipe Calderon, to also propose to discuss the issue in the next meeting of leaders of Central American Integration System in June.

Perez blames drug cartels for high rates of violence in Guatemala, a country of 13 million overrun by gangs and Mexican drug trafficking members, where there is a murder rate of 41 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, according with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

According to Washington, 90 percent of the cocaine that is smuggled from South America, especially Colombia, to the United States passes through land and sea territory in Central America.

For Costa Rica, for example, the decriminalization of drugs would generate, in principle, higher consumption of these substances, since they reduce the perceived risk, said Patricia Orozco, director of the Institute on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (IAFA) of that country.

Meanwhile, the director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Mirta Roses, was in favor of opening a debate on whether to decriminalize drugs as a strategy to combat drug trafficking.

The Guatemalan approach should be taken into account, because the issue of fighting drugs should be approached from different perspectives in order to find a solution to the health and safety problems caused by drug trafficking, said Roses.

During his first days in office, Perez ordered the Army of his country to coordinate activities with the security forces to neutralize organized crime groups and drug trafficking.

According to him, this could be achieved by the use of military power to restore and maintain control of the air, sea and land spaces, making inter-agency support operations.

 

 

By Lara Holmes

The European Union (EU) will formally resume the negotiating rounds for a partnership agreement with all Central American countries next week in Brussels, in which will also be Honduras, whose political crisis caused by the June coup led to the suspension of said process.

This was announced today by the European Commission (EC), which said in a statement that it will work with representatives of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica next week, at the same time it will carry out rounds parallelly with Colombia and Peru to achieve a free trade agreement can be final.

 

By Lara Holmes

The Full Court of Costa Rica agreed last year to increase from 8 to 12 years, the severance pay for all court employees, not counting at the time with the money to fund the benefit.

The judges took the decision on May 11, 2011 at the request of the employee associations and it became final on 23 June of that year.

This provision will take effect from 23 June this year for all judicial officers, including judges. THere are 9,758 people working in the judiciary.