This week ends with the approval of the reform to the General Participation System in the seventh of the eight debates that it requires to become a law of the Republic and while the National Government and related sectors celebrate this progress, There are more and more alerts about the effects that the project will have and the fiscal crisis that it could generate.
Basically what this initiative seeks is to raise from 23.8% to 39.5% transfers from the Nation to the municipalities and departments, for operating expenses, over a period of 12 years. Although its promoters assure that this is part of the regional autonomy that should have been sought years ago, there are those who warn that it is not viable and that it may remain an unfulfilled promise.
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Mauricio Cárdenas, former Minister of Finance, pointed out that everything that happened in Congress with this issue shows for him that “there are two ways to govern Colombia. One on the basis of creating illusions, false expectations, to in the end generate another frustration, political wear and tear, change in governments, which in the end leave with all their political capital extinguished. Or govern on the basis of reality, of what is pragmatic, of what can be done.”
“What is being offered today to the departments and municipalities of Colombia is not viable because there is no money, those resources do not exist. There is nowhere to get them from. We would have to end the payment of pensions, with the infrastructure that It is being built, with the support of universities. There is no way, there is no way,” he said.
Regions
Julian Espinosa
Meanwhile, for the former Minister of Finance and former president of Ecopetrol, Juan Carlos Echeverry, the more the initiative, promoted by Minister Juan Fernando Cristo, advances, the more the country moves towards a scenario of fiscal unsustainability, due to what he He described them as “irresponsible acts” by President Gustavo Petro.
“Colombia is literally on the brink of an abyss due to irresponsibility of the President of the Republic, of his Minister of the Interior, Mr. Cristo, for the inaction of his Minister of Finance, but above all by the Congress of the Republic, the governors and the mayors. At what point did it occur to all these ladies and gentlemen to think that destroying the country by distributing money that doesn’t exist, that doesn’t exist, is going to be good,” he criticized.
Based on this, he warned that “we are on the verge of the bankruptcy of the State, at least the beginning of the bankruptcy of the State, with consequences that are absolutely enormous, unthinkable. “What they are creating now is the worst crisis imaginable and this is under the direction of the Government and under the fever of Congress and the governors and mayors.”
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Things to improve
Another vision that was added to this debate was that of Senator Angélica Lozano, from the Green Alliance, who showed the good, the bad and “the seriousness of the initiative, beginning by recognizing that the increase in the resources that the government central will send to the regions, it cannot be given until there is a transfer of powers.
“An administrative reform is required, that is, it recognizes that they also have to transfer institutional and personal capacity from the Nation to the municipalities. The good thing is that the deadline for bringing to Congress the powers law that says this goes from here to here goes from six to twelve months,” he explained.
Colombian pesos
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However, Lozano also has concerns, such as the fact that, according to her, “it maintains the duplicity of effort, that is, the current, the return of the fool, that the Nation can maintain by making some powers and the municipality and the department too. The idea is not to duplicate, the idea is to correct this.”
Finally, he described the limitations that are being generated in the Medium-Term Fiscal Framework as very serious, “saying that we are going to transfer everything possible, everything that is needed according to the fiscal framework, to the available resources. By removing that limit, they are incentivizing and forcing a transfer without fiscal responsibility.”
At this moment, the reform of the General Participation System is awaiting the filing of the final text for debate in the plenary session of the House of Representatives, which the Government expects to take place in the coming days. taking into account that the Legislature will meet until December 16.
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