Guatemala Statutory legal interest (interés legal)
Guatemala Statutory legal interest (interés legal): no single figure applies. The reason is set out below, cited to the governing instrument. Last checked against the official source on 10 Aug 2026.
Guatemala publishes no legal interest rate: Art. 1947 of the Código Civil defines it as a formula crystallised on the day it is fixed — the banking system's published weighted-average lending rate of the previous day, less two percentage points.
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| Current value | structured — see the API |
|---|---|
| In force from | — |
| Official source | Código Civil (Decreto Ley 106) art. 1947: 'El interés legal es igual al promedio ponderado de las tasas de interés activas publicadas de los bancos del sistema al día anterior a la fecha de su fijación, reducido en dos puntos porcentuales. A falta de su publicación o en caso de duda o discrepancia, se solicitará informe a la Superintendencia de Bancos, el cual tendrá carácter definitivo' |
| Last verified | 2026-08-10 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
REFUSAL — Guatemala has a formula, not a published rate, and no single number is correct for more than one fixing date. Código Civil art. 1947 sets the legal interest at the weighted average of the lending (activas) rates published by the banks of the system ON THE DAY BEFORE THE DATE IT IS FIXED, less two percentage points. Three consequences follow. (1) The rate is anchored to the fixing date, not to a calendar period: two claims fixed a month apart carry different legal rates, and the figure for a claim fixed today is not the figure for one fixed in September. (2) No authority publishes 'the legal interest rate' — what is published is the underlying reference, the weighted-average interest rate of the banking system's credit portfolio, released by the Superintendencia de Bancos on the twelfth business day of the month following the period it covers, separately for moneda nacional and moneda extranjera, with Banco de Guatemala carrying the same series; the legal rate is that figure minus two points, computed by whoever is fixing it. (3) Where the publication is missing or the parties differ, art. 1947 makes the Superintendencia de Bancos the tie-breaker: 'se solicitará informe a la Superintendencia de Bancos, el cual tendrá carácter definitivo' — a report from the SIB settles the number conclusively, and that is the route a creditor should use rather than arguing from a data series. CURRENCY MATTERS: the reference average is published separately for quetzal and foreign-currency lending, so a dollar obligation takes the foreign-currency average less two points, not the quetzal one. COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS: Código de Comercio (Decreto 2-70) art. 691, in the wording given by Decreto 29-95, permits capitalisation of interest in mercantile obligations only while the rate does not exceed the weighted average applied by the banks on their active operations in the period concerned — a ceiling on compounding, not a default rate, and it does not supply a figure for an unpriced debt. Retrieval note: sib.gob.gt, banguat.gob.gt and congreso.gob.gt all return HTTP 403 to automated fetchers and refuse connections from datacentre ranges; the reference average must be read from the SIB's dynamic query tool in a browser, or obtained directly by requesting the art. 1947 report from the Superintendencia.
Get it programmatically
curl https://latamref.dev/v1/gt/statutory-interest
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://latamref.dev/v1/gt/statutory-interest/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://latamref.dev/provenance/gt/statutory-interestOther Guatemala series: Banguat tasa de interés líder de política monetaria · IVA standard rate · VAT registration threshold · Minimum wage (lowest rate in the activity x circumscription matrix) · Public holidays · CPI inflation (year-on-year) · Corporate income tax rate · Withholding tax rates · Personal income tax brackets · Statutory social-insurance contributions
The same figure elsewhere: Guyana · Honduras · Jamaica · Mexico · Nicaragua · all 22