Estrategia de Recaudación de Ingresos Propios y Recuperación de Morosidad San Miguel Ixtahuacán San Marcos

The municipality is composed of 62 populated centers, including the urban center, 19 villages, 41 hamlets, and a canton. The municipality receives significant income from mining royalties, which are important and relevant to the municipal government's finances. However, the municipal government's own income is below what it could potentially collect. The Nexos Locales project, implemented by Development Alternatives, Inc., has developed a technical assistance program to improve the municipal government's financial management. This program presents an analysis of the main constitutional and ordinary laws that regulate the application of taxes and fees, as well as data on the income obtained by the municipality from the collection of taxes and fees. The technical assistance program aims to increase the municipal government's own income through actions that raise awareness among residents and increase the municipality's economic capacity to provide basic services guaranteed by the Constitution of the Republic of Guatemala. The program emphasizes the importance of the municipal government's authorities, including the mayor and council members, as well as the municipal government's personnel, services, and planning office, in participating in the different actions to achieve the increase in own income. The main objective of the Nexos Locales project is to strengthen municipalities in the western highlands of Guatemala to promote socioeconomic development with greater response, inclusion, and effectiveness, while increasing income that responds to the concerns of citizens, administering public resources through participation and solid financial systems. The municipal government of San Miguel Ixtahuacan San Marcos has a potential to increase its own income through the collection of taxes and fees, which would not only allow it to finance its operations but also increase the transfers from the central government, as a quarter of them are assigned based on local revenue. Additionally, reducing the need for public debt to finance operational or investment expenses would be beneficial. The technical assistance program in financial management does not disregard the autonomy of local governments and seeks to be a practical and concrete element that allows: * Contributing to the definition of the legal framework that regulates municipal own income * Establishing simple concepts of taxes and fees * Defining who is responsible for creating or modifying them * Identifying the principles or steps to be taken in the collection of municipal own income * Establishing which municipal administrative unit is responsible for directing the process of collecting municipal own income * Suggesting actions to raise awareness among residents of the importance of fulfilling their tax obligations towards the municipality * Having a functional collection plan through the application of criteria In the municipality of San Miguel Ixtahuacan San Marcos, action plans will be implemented through a strategy that allows not only improving municipal own income but also reducing the arrears in water and tax pads, which, by reducing, increases own income and allows maintaining updated pads for better control of contributors and the way their behavior is timely and effective for decision-making by municipal authorities. The technical assistance program was finalized after nine in-situ sessions in the municipality of San Miguel Ixtahuacan San Marcos, where the identification and analysis of municipal own income were carried out, reflecting that municipal own income is very low and that a strategy is needed to improve these income in an effective and timely manner without neglecting the common good of the municipality's inhabitants, as established by the Constitution of the Republic of Guatemala. From the information obtained from the field work carried out in the municipality on the identification and analysis of potential municipal own income for the year 2015 and from January to September 2016, the most representative rubrics regarding collection were determined, as follows: * Interests generated by monetary accounts: 1 * Value of Ornato ticket: 2 * Rental of premises: 3-4 * Piso de Plaza: 4-5 * Water canon: 5-7 * Feria Titular: 6-3 * Taxi parking: 7-6 * Concession of water services: 8-8