Development Plan, awaiting the sanction of President Petro

In the early hours of this Friday, May 5, finally The National Development Plan of the Government of Gustavo Petro was approved in Congress. The Chamber and the Senate reconciled the final text, which was made up of 373 articles, and it only remains for it to be sanctioned by President Gustavo Petro.

(See: Why the Development Plan did not like the infrastructure sector).

The director of the National Planning Department (DNP), Jorge Iván González, highlighted the work of Congress, and assured that projects with a national impact were approved with the Plan.

The project pursues investments of $1.154 billion, and among the main points that were defined in the conciliation stands out, for example, the creation of the Popular Public Initiative Associations, as “a contractual instrument for linking public entities and the different associative instruments of community origin”.

This article had not been endorsed in the Chamber, but it was in the Senate, and finally the text of the latter was accepted for this point.

A highly controversial point in the debate was article 100 of the final text, which allows state entities to contract for the minimum amount from the popular economy.

(See: ‘Until now we had governed with Duque’s plan’, Petro).

Several congressmen questioned that this article would allow “hiring by hand” from the Government, with the possibility that contracts be delivered to NGOs and other types of organizations from the Executive. The text was left as it came in the paper, as approved by the Senate.

At this point, in the House of Representatives had been excluded from this possibility to natural persons, and an approved petition had been filed that requested that “The contracting and purchasing process for compliance with this article will be governed by the principle of meritocracy, transparency, publicity, speed and will be subject to the regime of disqualifications and incompatibilities provided by law.”.

A point that had come up in the Senate, but passed in the Chamber, and which was finally left in the reconciled text is article 233, which increases the percentage of “transfer of gross sales of energy from own generation” to power plants. non-conventional renewable generation (solar and wind) with an installed capacity of more than 10 gigawatts.

(See: Development Plan survived examination before the plenary sessions of Congress).

Another point that was also accepted by the Chamber, because the Senate had eliminated it, is the one that defines the integration of the National Commission for Agricultural Credit.

Although article 8, which implemented the recommendations of the final report of the commission to clarify the truth, was approved in the House of Representatives, it did not pass in the Senate, and the position of the upper house was accepted in the reconciled text.

(See: Approved article that allows the purchase of voluntary offer lands).

Likewise, in the debate the Government also lost with the fall of several key points, such as two of the powers that the Plan for the President pursued: one proposed, for a term of six months, to grant powers to the president for the development of the national forestry service as part of the institutional framework of the environment and development sector; and the other sought the creation of the National Agency for Digital Security and Space Affairs.

Laura Lucia Becerra Elejalde
Journalist Portfolio
Twitter: @LauraB_Elejalde