Last week ended with two important data for the country's economy, one focused on monitoring the economic dynamics for the month of February (ISE) and another on the living conditions of Colombians and the impact of poverty. Both left in common that although they did not end up in the red, they could have been better.
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Firstly, there is the Economic Monitoring Indicator for February, which although it marked an upturn compared to December and January and had the highest rebound in recent months, It still does not reach the levels it had before the pandemic and continues to be affected by the bad times of key sectors such as industry and commerce.
According to Dane, this indicator had an annual variation of 2.49%, which although marks a rebound compared to December and January datawas below the same period in 2023, when it was 2.7%, and in February 2022, when it was 6.8%.
In this sense, it is worth highlighting projections such as that of César Tamayo Tobón, dean of the Eafit School of Finance, Economics and Government, who maintains that the short and medium term outlook will come with slow growth and great challenges to cope with the slowdown.
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“We are at a time of aiming to recover growth, but with some challenges, especially with an issue that I think has worried many and that is what has happened with fixed investment, which fell at very important rates and if we want to resume the course, we cannot leave it aside”, this academic explained.
In these ISE data, it must also be said that when broken down by sector, primary activities (agriculture, livestock, hunting, forestry and fishing; exploitation of mines and quarries) are those that continue to drive the economy if it is taken into account that their annual variation was the most significant, reaching 7.8% which far exceeds the 2.9% of a year before, but is lower than the 10.2% of last January.
Meanwhile, secondary activities (industry) and trade in tertiary activities continue to have a bad time and this, according to experts, can explain the unfavorable dynamics of the ISE and the drop in projections.
Jackeline Piraján, economist at Scotiabank Colpatria, explained that there are difficulties for the job-generating sectors and that work must be done on them so that “they can get ahead” and give respite to the economy.
“We have to wait a few additional months and see if the Bank of the Republic decides to continue lowering interest rates at a greater speed, but, for the moment, Colombia continues in a period of economic weakness and the recovery could take, especially in the second part of the yearheld.
(See: More than 6.2 million Colombians are in poverty)
Poverty in Colombia
The second indicator that was known last week was that of Multidimensional Poverty, which can be interpreted in two ways, highlighting, on the one hand, that in 2023 338,000 people emerged from poverty or raising the alert against the 6.2 million people who still continue to suffer from some deficiency.
Although the report that consolidates last year's figures maintains the streak of reduction of this scourge, when looking at the impact on the services measured by this reportit can be seen that key points such as education, work, health and protection for old age are those that are most in short supply among poor communities.
Dane reported that the incidence of multidimensional poverty in the country last year was 12.1%; 0.8 percentage points less than in 2022, when it had remained at 12.9%.
Given this, experts such as the former Minister of Finance, Mauricio Cárdenas, have an important approach, in which they maintain that to confront this scourge, We must take advantage of growth opportunities that are not being taken into accountespecially in terms of investment.
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“We must ask ourselves what we are doing so that next year things improve and we return to the bad streak, the truth is that I think we are being too optimistic, because, for me, key points such as confidence, are not going to improve in the short term”said this analyst.
The focus on growth and acceleration of the productive system, taking as reference the Dane data on poverty, should start in the rural sector and distant territories, which is where the impact of this problem is felt most.
The Caribbean and Pacific regions, the first with 20.1% and the second with 19.4%; They are the ones who feel the impacts of multidimensional poverty the most. In third place is the Central region with 11.2%, while the lowest incidence of multidimensional poverty occurred in Bogotá with 3.6%, followed by Valle del Cauca with 7.2% and finally the Antioquia regions with 9.5%.
“The investment bus is leaving us, it's not that there is little investment… the investors don't have as much appetite for us because there is no profitability,” added Mauricio Cárdenas.
Although things in terms of poverty are going well, analysts highlight that the reduction of this problem would occur faster if the economy at least returns to the average of 3% economic growth that it had five years ago, otherwise it will continue. rowing against the current, mainly hitting the areas most affected by this problem.
Poverty in Colombia
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In terms of poverty, Dane reported that notable changes were observed in key well-being indicators.
For example, the percentage of people who do not have health insurance had a significant decrease of 1.7 percentage points, falling from 8.4% in 2022 to 6.7% in 2023. In addition, the low educational achievement indicator also showed a downward trend, reducing by 1.5 percentage points, going from 40.9% in 2022 to 39.4% in 2023.
In the rural sector, There were notable changes in indicators, such as the percentage of people without access to an improved water source, which decreased by four percentage points, falling to 33.3% in 2023.
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DANIEL HERNÁNDEZ NARANJO
Briefcase
