Weekly Report - 01 December 2016 (WR-16-47)

GUATEMALA | Expansive budget. On 29 November Guatemala’s congress approved a Q77.31bn (US$10.27bn) budget for 2017, up 9.1% on this year. In an eight-hour debate, 115 deputies, a comfortable majority, voted in favour of the budget presented by the government led by President Jimmy Morales. Failure to approve the budget before the end of November would have meant that by law this year’s budget would have been retained for 2017.