The allocation for the Departmental Development Councils (CODEDE) will be increased by Q200 million by 2026, as approved in the last National Council of Urban and Rural Development (CONADUR). The roof of ordinary funds will be Q4 thousand 509 million.
The increase corresponds to the growth of taxes that the population pays to the State; However, until July of this year the councils have achieved execute only 12% of ordinary funds received.
In Petén and the Metropolitan Region, the investment moves away from the global percentage, with execution above 20%, while the lowest expenditure levels are in the northeast with 5%, according to the data of the Integrated Accounting System (Sicoin).
The CODEDE funds come from the Value Added Tax (VAT) corresponding to Q4 thousand 491 million and the other Q17 million of the royalty royalties in hydrocarbons. Both are distributed by municipality or department according to the population of each place.
The amount request will be formalized when the Budget project is presented to Congress. For this year, the allocation of ordinary funds amounts to Q4 thousand 300 million. By adding the resources not executed in 2024 and other assignments, until July, the Codede have Q10 thousand 400 million to execute projects in the 340 municipalities of the country. To date, more than Q2 billion of Q12,500 million in force for this year have been disbursed.
Term extension
In response to that slow execution, Conadur decided to expand the deadlines to present investment projects for more than 30 days. After the provision, the times remain as follows: the files may be submitted until July 31, for the approval of technical opinion in the Public Investment System (SNIP) was set as a limit on August 15 and the signing of agreements no later than September 16.
For the execution of a work – a drainage project, paving, among others – with funds from the CODEDE it is necessary to carry out a series of procedures for the approval of the projects and disbursement of the funds. Only after exhausted the process, the start of the works is possible.
The extension of the deadlines corresponds to the entire procedure prior to the start of a work and, additionally, the procedures of the Contracting Law take up to 45 days, that is to say that some contracts could be signed in the last days of October and would only have two months to carry out the projects.
In 2024, when the deadlines for the formulation of investment projects were also expanded, the executive authorities justified it as a response to the delay in administrative processes to execute the works due to the late election of departmental governors. On the other hand, this year the application was raised by the mayor of San Juan Sacatepéquez and representative of the Metropolitan Region, Juan Carlos Pellecer, under the argument that the processes are slow and cause delays at the beginning of the works.
“The load is found in us the mayors who are the executors. After the agreement with the governor begins, another one far away for us begins,” said Right.
The president, Bernardo Arévalo, urged the members of the CODEDE to roughly rule the procedures of the works of the next year, because according to the legal framework the approval process is carried out a year earlier to the financing of the project.
“The projects should have an approval in the SNIP the previous year, if we tried to meet this procedure we would not have to be resorting to those delays and we would even gain time for the disbursements and execution of the projects and it would perhaps be the greatest achievement we could have,” said the president.
Multiannual expense
Last year, the deadlines extended at least twice, one in the first half and the second, during the approval of the 2025 general budget, when the Congress authorized the funds to move for this year.
At the discretion of the expert in local governments, Luis Linares, it is likely that again it is sought that the execution of the funds of the CODEDE is multiannual.
“It’s the safest thing -which will request that they be multiannual because the budget cannot return to the common fund,” said Linares.
He recalled the way in which the negotiations of the tips budget and their multiannual use have been carried out that, at the time, was criticized for granting a millionaire fund to the CODEDE that historically have not demonstrated effective execution capacity.
File management
In the Conadur session, the Ministry of Executive Coordination of the Presidency (SCEP) presented the figures updated until June of the administrative processes of each work. 13% of the projects financed by ordinary funds do not have a file before the General Secretariat of Planning and Programming (Segeplan) and 48% have been approved.
As for extraordinary budget projects, 38% do not have a file and only 21% have been approved.
The mayor Pellecer explained that some files have not been approved by the lack of certainty about the property of the land, that is, the municipalities in some cases plan projects in communal lands.
“In Segeplan, it is not being accepted that the right is carried out – of the land that communities have granted for their works,” said the mayor.
He added that, for example, in the direction of roads more personnel are needed so that the procedures of the guarantees progress faster. This complaint is recurring among mayors who indicate slowness in the processes of all institutions related to the projects of the Codedes.
Assessment
Linares added that it is necessary for the government to carry out an impact study of the works built with tips funds to determine benefits in the population and seek the quality of the expense. This, at your discretion, would allow you to make better decisions about the resources assigned to them.
“It should be done to have a solid justification, I think they are wasted resources, but hard data is needed,” he concluded.