The Government would need between $10 and $14 billion to finish the year

As time goes by, a criticism that has been made of the planning of the General Budget of the Nation for months becomes more and more relevant, since, as is popularly said, there would have been happy accounts with the income and that has led to the fact that the cash accounts currently do not balance.

Proof of this can be seen in the lack of clarity regarding the litigation with which the Government aspired to raise more than $15 billion, an amount that was later lowered to $10 billion and today it is projected that it would not reach $5 billion. and that the law on which this issue depends has not even reached Congress.

If we add to this that at this moment the tax collection is almost $5 billion below what was expected as of March, and that experts warn that public spending is increasing, the question undoubtedly arises if the money in this moment will be enough for the whole year.

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In order to know how the accounts are and if the problems of cash will lead to future impacts, Portafolio asked several experts the following question: “If everything projected this year in the General Budget of the Nation in terms of spending is executed, how much money would the country need to close 2024?” .

One of the first analysts who participated in this survey was José Ignacio López, president of Anif, who stressed that it is important to start by “honest the fiscal accounts,” since factors such as the suspension of the ruling of the Constitutional Court on the non-deductibility of royalties.

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First of all, they warn that, “in addition and subtraction, the Government would be short this year between $4 and $9 billion to achieve the proposed fiscal deficit goal of 5.3% of GDP” and that “covering the fiscal gap requires greater efforts from the Government through a spending cut, the creation of a reactivation plan effective and/or better management of the Dian”.

“A good part of this deficit or shortfall is explained by a lower collection dynamic and by the gap created by having planned those revenues from litigation that are not going to materialize. What we insist is that, faced with this very challenging panorama, it would be good for the government to be honest with its fiscal accounts and promptly announce a spending cut,” said this expert.

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Taking this into account, he highlights that you can start with “the areas where there has not been good execution, so that this would give you peace of mind.” to investors that the fiscal deficit will be met and that the fiscal rule will be complied with.”

Meanwhile, for Henry Amorocho, professor of Public Finance at the Universidad del Rosario, in addition to the decrease in the Dian collection, which he estimates at 1.2% and describes it as a significant gap, he maintains that we must look at aspects such as the impact of investment, both public and private.

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“If we have an average investment execution of 35% in the year, but where payments basically in investment are 9% to 10%, undoubtedly the lag still continues and the economy will not be benefiting completely from growth, because the goods and services have not yet appeared. “This being the case, then of course it is justified that there is a decrease in the collection,” he explained.

However, this teacher maintains that in all this we cannot ignore the factor that money may not be needed, especially if we take into account that this Government is lagging behind in budget execution and this would help to calm the consequences of the problems of box that they have been warning about.

Added to this is that the economic growth projection for now remains between 1% and 1.1%; which for him is modest and reflects a cautious perspective on the capacity of the Colombian economy to recover quickly, puts the country in an optimistic scenario, despite the fact that the government will face significant challenges in achieving its fiscal goals.

“Taking this into account and in the scenario that is being proposed, it must be said that we would basically be seeing a result very close to the possibility of lower liquidity with respect to the collection goals, of between $10 billion and $12 billion, a figure that is worth It is worth starting to review carefully,” he explained.

At this point it must also be said that a recent report of the Committee Autonomous of Fiscal Rule maintains that the shortfall in the Government’s coffers begins with $10 billion in arbitration litigation and to that we would have to add what is finally not received for tax collection, which for now amounts to $4 billion.

Although these experts emphasize that it is necessary to review how to cut spending, an analysis by Banco de Bogotá indicates that the opposite is happening, since in nominal terms, Government spending is rising significantly, as a consequence of the high appropriation of resources.

At this point they say that “in particular, given that the PGN went from $423 billion in 2023 to $502 billion this year, the payments made by the Government for “Operating and investment expenses grew 22% annually so far this year to March.”

“In this way, cash problems could continue to pressure the implementation of this early redemption strategy, with an accelerated issuance of TES, which would end up ending the auction scheme early, which could be interpreted as good news, but would open space for advance financing and ultimately greater issuance of TES through less transparent mechanisms,” they concluded.