In December, two-thirds of Congress approved an anti-monopoly law proposed by legislators aligned with President Bernardo Arévalo, marking a significant improvement of their negotiating power in the legislature while sparking debate over whether the new rules will in fact curb market concentration — or create insider loopholes.
Yuliana Ramazzini writes in El Faro on the battle over new market competition rules and whether these rules rules will ultimately challenge or reinforce the decision-making influence of the most powerful economic actors in Guatemala.
Guatemala has some of the most concentrated industries across Latin American industry, ranging from cement to telecoms to traditional media to chicken to beer. This made it all the more striking when legislators from Semilla, President Bernardo Arévalo’s social-democrat minority party, got 110 of 160 votes in the big business-friendly Congress to support a new law purportedly challenging that grip on Guatemalan commerce.
Until now, Guatemala and Cuba were the only countries in Latin America and the Caribbean to not have anti-monopoly codes. On December 6, Arévalo signed the Competition Law, which had been debated in different iterations for 25 years. His party had named the passage of the bill as one of their top priorities in 2024.
In practice the law will kick into gear in up to two years, after the creation of an autonomous Superintendency of Competition that will be tasked with applying it. The Superintendency’s three-seat board of directors will include economists or lawyers chosen by the Executive; the Economic Commission of Congress, supported by an unspecified international entity; and the Guatemalan Monetary Board.
While some business people have shrugged that they already operate under competition laws in neighboring countries, the conservative business association CACIF has framed the law as a big-government chokehold: “As we create more regulations, we raise prices, and what ends up increasing is the cost of the basic basket of goods,” CACIF President Carmen Torrebiarte told Canal Antigua. “This [law] disincentivizes businesses from wanting to join the formal market.”
Economist José Luis Moreira, who advocated for the law, expects that one aspect of the law will anger the largest economic actors: “If your company is of a certain size and you want to buy or merge with another, you have to ask for permission, and the Superintendency will decide whether it authorizes it or not,” he told El Faro English. “This is necessary because it is easier to prevent monopolies from being formed.”
You can read the full piece, with links, here, Guatemala’s New Anti-Monopoly Law: Bark or Bite?.
Categories: Corruption, Guatemala, Impunity, Justice, Lobbying
Guatemala Solidarity Network 
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