Caribbean & Central America - January 2014 (ISSN 1741-4458)

New finance minister: On 9 January President Otto Pérez Molina promoted the deputy minister for financial administration, María Castro, to finance minister. Castro replaces Pavel Centeno who stepped down on 16 October 2013. A co-founder of the ruling Partido Patriota (PP), Centeno was a key architect of the president’s February 2012 fiscal reform, passed a month after his PP government took office. Centeno’s departure was seen as a victory for the conservative business elite, which fiercely opposed the tax reform and which has lodged various challenges to it, leaving its efficacy in considerable doubt.  Centeno also had frequent run-ins with the legislature. He offered his resignation (which was not accepted) in March 2012 in protest at the opposition’s attempts to summon him for questioning, a tactic he slammed as an attempt to sabotage the executive’s legislative agenda [RC-12-05]. While Centeno this time round cited ‘health reasons’ as grounds for his decision to step down, the local media was quick to fan rumours that he had a run-in with Pérez Molina over the president’s decision, announced on 15 October, to intervene in five customs posts, with military support, as part of efforts to combat organised crime and boost Guatemala’s notoriously low tax take.

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