Skip to content
Sunday, August 30, 2026 · Guatemala CityQ7.6242 per US$+0.00%
ADVANCE GUATEMALA
Back to the researchResearched · unverified

The investor atlas

Guatemala's port system and its share of foreign trade

Dossier
Infrastructure and logistics06-logistica.md
Domain
Ports, cargo and corridorslogistica
Room
Trade/comercio
Audited
Audited

Guatemala operates three main ports — Puerto Quetzal on the Pacific, and Santo Tomás de Castilla and Puerto Barrios on the Atlantic — plus eight specialized terminals. 60% of movement is concentrated on the Pacific coast, with Puerto Quetzal the leading player, and in 2024 91% of cargo was domestic trade against 9% of operations with third countries. The familiar figure that '96% of foreign trade' passes through the ports does NOT appear in the source consulted (República) and remains to be checked against the National Port Commission (CPN). The three state ports today report to the Ministry of Communications (CIV).

The research is written in English; quoted figures, source names and the titles of legal instruments stay in the language their source published them in.

Figures

Participación del litoral Pacífico en el movimiento portuarioRepública
60%diagnóstico 2025
Composición de la carga: comercio nacional / operaciones con terceros paísesRepública
91% / 9%2024
Puertos principales / terminales especializadasRepública
3 / 82025

Caveat

the '96% of foreign trade' does not appear in the cited source — to be verified against the CPN

Sources

Organizations named in the answer

  • Puerto QuetzalThe southern corridor's sea outlet: the Pacific coast handles 60% of the country's port traffic; around 60 km from the capital by the Palín-Escuintla motorway and 4 km from Zona Libre QuetzalPort
  • RepúblicaReports on the closure of SEPAZ and the SAA (2 April 2020) and on the CABI/Cámara del Agro study of the impact of land invasions (14 September 2020)Other
  • Comisión Portuaria Nacional (CPN)A source of port data cited by cross-reference to dossier 06Public agency

Directory of organizations

Related records

This layer is research: read from public sources by the archive's own team, every claim cited with the date it was consulted, and audited where it is marked so. It has not entered the verified store — no figure here was fetched back from its source or stamped with a retrieval time — so it wears no red provenance numeral and never mixes with the verified figures.