What is the Agencia Boliviana de Información?
The Agencia Boliviana de Información, ABI, is Bolivia's state news agency. The Media and Journalism Research Center's State Media Monitor, in an entry dated July 2026, describes it as “the official state news agency, within the government's communications apparatus”, and records that Decreto Supremo 5566 of 2 March 2026 constituted it within the Unidad de Comunicación Estratégica del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia as a decentralised public entity under the Ministerio de la Presidencia.[1]
The agency's own website could not be retrieved for this entry: a fetch of abi.bo was refused by the site's robots.txt. What follows is therefore sourced from the monitoring body and from other outlets, not from the agency's own pages. That is a limitation of the evidence available here, and it is stated so that the basis of each claim below is clear.
What does the Agencia Boliviana de Información cover?
State Media Monitor records that ABI produces and distributes “news on government activity and national affairs, free of charge, through its website and social-media channels and via an RSS/syndication service”, in Spanish, and that it carries no advertising.[1] Sport falls inside that remit as part of national affairs. The decree stream ABI reports includes the instruments that govern Bolivian sport, among them Decreto Supremo 5675 of 13 August 2026, which EL DEBER reported the following day as keeping the Viceministerio de Deportes inside the Ministerio de Salud.[4] That viceministerio, whose own ministry page carries a profile of its acting head, is the state body whose activity ABI's remit covers.[5]
The same entry places ABI alongside two other state outlets in the same apparatus, Radio Illimani – Red Patria Nueva and the newspaper Ahora El Pueblo.[1] Bolivia's state television, Bolivia TV, states separately that it is an Empresa Pública Nacional Estratégica under the same ministry, the Ministerio de la Presidencia, and that what it broadcasts is treated as official information of the Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia.[2] The two bodies therefore sit under one ministry, which is a fact about the instruments rather than an inference drawn here.
How large is the Agencia Boliviana de Información's audience?
No audience measurement for ABI could be retrieved, and the agency's own site could not be fetched.[1] State Media Monitor records that ABI takes no advertising and distributes its content free of charge, which means there is no commercial audience figure of the kind a rate card would carry.[1]
The measured figure that exists is at country level: Reporters Without Borders placed Bolivia 91st of 180 in its 2026 World Press Freedom Index with a score of 54.25, and wrote in the same country page that “the Bolivian government controls many newspapers” and that “media linked to the government enjoy privileges but independent media are exposed to strong economic pressure, especially the threat of withdrawal of state advertising”. Those are RSF's words.[3]
Since when has the Agencia Boliviana de Información existed?
State Media Monitor's July 2026 entry gives the agency's founding as 6 February 1996.[1] That date rests on a single source here: the agency's own account could not be retrieved, and no gazette text establishing it was found.
Founding and current constitution are separate. The instrument State Media Monitor records as constituting ABI in its present form is Decreto Supremo 5566 of 2 March 2026, thirty years later, which places it inside the Unidad de Comunicación Estratégica as a decentralised public entity under the Ministerio de la Presidencia.[1] The Gaceta Oficial de Bolivia's own search interface could not be retrieved for this page, so that decree's text was not read directly.
Why does the Agencia Boliviana de Información matter in Bolivia's sport?
It is the wire the Bolivian state runs, and its copy is redistributed by other outlets, which makes its status part of how a sports story is read. State Media Monitor classifies ABI as State-Controlled, “unchanged across all SMM cycles”, records that it is state-owned with executive-appointed leadership and no commercial revenue, and writes that it “self-declares veracity & plurality but has no binding independence safeguard; output realigns with each government”. That assessment is the monitoring body's, published in July 2026.[1]
It sits in a sector that RSF describes in the terms quoted above, and alongside Bolivia TV, whose own instruments place it under the same ministry and treat its output as official information of the state.[3][2] Where this site uses a Bolivian state source on sport, that is the footing it is used on. See Bolivia and Bolivian sports media.
References
- State Media Monitor (Media and Journalism Research Center) — Agencia Boliviana de Información (ABI), entry dated July 2026: founding 6 February 1996; Decreto Supremo 5566 of 2 March 2026; State-Controlled classification; funding, governance and independence assessment. Accessed 2026-09-23.
- Bolivia TV — Historia: Decreto Supremo Nº 0078 of 15 April 2009 constituting the channel an Empresa Pública Nacional Estratégica under the Ministerio de la Presidencia. Accessed 2026-09-23.
- Reporters Without Borders — Bolivia country page, 2026 World Press Freedom Index (rank 91 of 180, score 54.25): media landscape, political and economic context. Accessed 2026-09-23.
- EL DEBER — El deporte mantiene su rango de viceministerio dentro del Ministerio de Salud (14 August 2026): Decreto Supremo 5675 of 13 August 2026, an example of the decree stream ABI reports. Accessed 2026-09-23.
- Ministerio de Salud y Deportes (Bolivia) — Viceministerio de Deportes: the state sport portfolio ABI's government-activity remit covers. Accessed 2026-09-23.