Finance Minister Jonathan Menkos hopes that the execution of the Departmental Development Councils (Codedes) have “a rebound” in the second half of the year. Furthermore, he ruled out that the resources allocated to these entities could be diverted towards activities for electoral purposes.
During the press conference called La Ronda, held this July 1, Menkos responded to the question about whether the Executive will provide support to the Codedes so that the assigned budget is executed in works and projects that benefit the population, and not in political campaign.
The Codedes budget for this year amounts to Q15 thousand 425 million 363 thousand 986.90 and, according to the Budget Transparency portal of the Ministry of Public Finance, until July 1 the execution was Q2 thousand 338 million 777 thousand 215.34, equivalent to 15.16% of the funds.
The main transfer of resources, according to the portal, was for road transport projects, where Q1 thousand 472 million 514 thousand 264 has been spent, which represents 62.9% of what was executed this year.
Menkos indicated that the temporary suspension of the General Budget of the Nation for the fiscal year 2026, based on a resolution of the Constitutional Court (CC) last January, fell on public investment. Despite this, he assured that The execution of the Codedes advances.
“We are expecting a rebound in investment starting in the second half of this year,” added the Minister of Finance.
On the other hand, he was emphatic in saying that the funds assigned to the Councils cannot be diverted, since there is “a framework” that defines each project, in which around 50 thousand citizens participate who carry out oversight work during execution. In addition, he pointed out that new funds are not provided if progress is not observed in the works.
The official added that, in the area of public investment, there are two more supervisors: the Secretariat of Executive Coordination of the Presidency (SCEP) and the Comptroller General of Accounts, which verifies that the resources are executed as established in each project.
Both institutions “have had separate increases in their budgets to shore up their functions of supervision, control and search for the quality of spending,” he said.
Citizen inspection
President Bernardo Arévalo added that there is a delegate council, in which the private sector and academia participate, which support the National Commission against Corruption to develop measures that facilitate the supervision, by civil society, of each work carried out in the municipalities and departments.
According to the president, the SCEP and the Secretariat of Planning and Programming of the Presidency (Segeplan) have created an atlas that allows the population to supervise the works carried out by the Codedes, such as the amounts assigned, the execution and who are the companies responsible for the projects.
He assured that tools like these allow us to detect problems of overvaluationbut also file complaints and “close the spaces for corruption.”
In 2025, the Codedes had a budget of Q12,269 million and, at the end of the year, They executed Q7,629 million, which represents 62.18% of what was assigned.