Bolivia’s Decree Closes Two Ministries — and Quietly Drops the Tourism Agency Paz Promised

Bolivia · Government

President Rodrigo Paz said on 3 August that he was cutting two ministries. Ten days later the decree arrived, and one of his promises had changed shape on the way.

If you follow Bolivian politics from a distance, this one is worth understanding, because it shows how the country actually works. On 3 August President Rodrigo Paz announced he was shrinking his cabinet from 14 ministries to 12. On 12 August both ministries he had abolished were still open, still staffed and still signing things. What was missing was a legal instrument — and the Bolivia ministries decree, DS 5675, landed on 13 August.

Why the Bolivia ministries decree took ten days

A president can announce a cabinet cut at a podium. He cannot close a ministry that way. Until a supreme decree is approved and published, the old structure keeps its legal existence — along with its payroll, its bank accounts and its signature authority. Tourism also had two internationally financed projects running to the end of the year, one with the Inter-American Development Bank and one with CAF.

So for a week and a half both doomed ministries carried on. Fernando Romero, still the planning minister, said on 11 August that he remained in office and that a decree was legally sufficient — it was, he said, a matter of austerity that would mean a significant saving for Bolivians. He did not put a figure on it, and nor has anyone else since.

Not everyone agrees the decree route is clean. Ley 777 of 2016 names the Planning Ministry as the governing body of the state’s integrated planning system, and critics argue a decree cannot undo what a law assigned. The decree answers with a saving clause: suppressing the ministry does not suppress the planning system, public investment, external financing, environment, or science and technology. The work moved. It was not cancelled.

The promise that changed shape

This is the part worth noticing. When Paz announced the cut on 3 August, he said tourism, folklore and gastronomy would be reconstituted as a national agency — a standalone body with its own identity.

The decree does not create that agency. It creates a Vice-Ministry of Sustainable Tourism and Cultures inside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with directorates for folklore and gastronomy under it. The National Symphony Orchestra, the Tiwanaku site administration and the film institute ADECINE also come under the Cancillería’s oversight. That is a smaller landing than the one advertised, and EFE flagged the difference when the text appeared.

What the twelve remaining ministries are

Article 27 names them: Foreign Affairs; the Presidency; Economy and Public Finance; Defence; Government; Labour; Sustainable Production, Environment and Water; Hydrocarbons and Energy; Mining and Metallurgy; Education; Health and Sports; and Works, Services and Housing.

One name is new. The old Ministry of Productive Development, Rural Affairs and Water is now Sustainable Production, Environment and Water, with a new vice-ministry covering environment, climate change, forestry and biodiversity — which is where the environment brief landed after Planning was dissolved. Inside the Ministry of Government, the vice-ministry that handled controlled substances is now called Integral Fight Against Drug Trafficking.

Keep the baseline straight, too. Paz took office in November 2025 with 15 ministries, closed the justice portfolio within days, and has now reached 12 in under ten months.

The presidential delegates, and why people are watching them

The most interesting part of DS 5675 is not the subtraction. It is the addition. The decree creates a category of presidential delegate — appointees who coordinate, follow up and evaluate policies needing specialised representation for strategic, cross-cutting, territorial, technical or extraordinary reasons.

They answer functionally to the presidential office, and the decree bars them from substituting for or duplicating a minister. Each individual delegation must still be defined by a further supreme decree setting its purpose, scope, term and reporting duties. That is the real check — and it means nobody yet knows how many delegates there will be. The obvious criticism writes itself: cut two ministers, then appoint an unspecified number of people who report straight to you, and the state has not got smaller. It has got more centralised.

Two other arrangements survive the rewrite. Vice President Edmand Lara — by now an open critic of the government he serves in — keeps an office administratively dependent on the Ministry of the Presidency. And Paz retains the power to run the state by digital means while he is abroad, with written limits on what he hands over when he does.

What this means if you live in or invest in Latin America

The practical consequences are narrow but real. Tourism licensing and cultural permits are now handled at the Foreign Ministry. Public investment approval and external financing sit at Economy and Public Finance. Environmental permitting is at Sustainable Production, Environment and Water. Contracts signed with the old entities remain valid — the decree transfers competences rather than voiding them — but a letter addressed to a ministry that no longer exists will not be answered.

The wider read is about credibility. Bolivia spent 2025 with a wide gap between the official and parallel dollar; since the exchange rate was unified at the end of last year the parallel rate has traded around Bs 11.5 to the dollar (about US$1 = Bs 11.5), close to the central bank’s own referential figure. On 30 July the bank approved a regulation letting it buy and sell dollars directly and by auction to smooth extreme swings — a facility it says it will use when the market overreacts, not one it is running now.

A government writing austerity into a decree preamble in that context is talking to lenders as much as to voters. The test is not the decree. It is whether the savings it implies ever get published.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources: Gaceta Oficial coverage — El Deber on DS 5675; EFE via Infobae — decree formalises the closures; Opinión — Article 27 and the tourism vice-ministry; El Día — delegates and the vice-presidency; ANF — Ley 777 and the planning system

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