Who regulates fishing and aquaculture in Guatemala, and what authorization does a shrimp or tilapia producer need?

The General Fisheries and Aquaculture Law, as published by MAGA's Directorate of Fisheries and Aquaculture Regulation (DIPESCA), sets the regime: MAGA is the steward of fisheries and aquaculture policy,… rules and management (art. 12); fishing and aquaculture are carried out under concession,… with no monopoly or exclusivity (art. 5);… full-cycle farming of aquatic species is subject to concession by licence, statistical control and supervision (art. 44); MAGA alone grants the concession, after a technical opinion by the competent authority, UNIPESCA in the text and DIPESCA today (art. 49); artisanal and small-scale commercial fishing are authorised by permit or licence and the other divisions by licence (art. 52); concessions granted are recorded in a technical file, an administrative register (art. 53); the applicant must show technical and financial capacity (art. 55). The text DIPESCA publishes also includes the regulation, with the sixty-day term for the ministerial resolution that authorises the licence. For a restaurant buying shrimp the practical consequence is one: a formal producer or exporter of farmed shrimp operates under a MAGA aquaculture licence and a commercial fisher under a fishing licence, and neither is published as an open list on the DIPESCA pages reviewed.