Next Wednesday, September 25, is the deadline for the Senate and the House of Representatives to define and approve in the first debate the General Budget of the Nation for 2025, in its accounts and expenses, or otherwise this rule will have to be governed by decree, in an increasingly tangled scenario. due to the lack of consensus with the Ministry of Finance regarding the money that the Government plans to spend next year.
Although representatives and senators of the economic commissions have been meeting for more than two months, there is no majority support in the Legislature for the request of $523 billion stipulated in the project, nor for the financing law that would collect the $12 billion that are missing from this expenditure projection, so they insist on the need to lower this amount.
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However, entities such as the Ministry of Finance and the National Department The Planning Department has made it clear that this money is needed to guarantee investment in the most remote regions and the fight against poverty, which is why making cuts will result in loss of growth among those who are part of this sector of society and social gaps.
According to the Organic Budget Statute, the current dates to be met include September 25, the deadline for approval in the first debate, and October 20, which is when the entire project must be ready and approved for 2025. If this is not met due to the Government’s fault, the Budget will be defined by taking what was approved in the current PGN with adjustments for economic growth, and if the fault falls on Congress, the Executive can withdraw it by decree.
Debate on the amount of the General National Budget.
Courtesy – Ministry of Finance
It should be remembered that the disagreement that remains latent between the congressmen and delegates of the Casa de Nariño, led to the failure to meet the first deadline on September 15, for the economic commissions to define the amount of expenses in the Budget, so this task was left for the week that is running, despite the fact that this opens the risk of claims of unconstitutionality.
The fact that the support of the majorities in the four economic commissions in the Senate and the House of Representatives is required and that these four groups cannot reach an agreement has generated a complex scenario in which any initiative that is submitted, related to the Budget, has a high probability of being defeated, as was seen during the session last Wednesday, September 11, which finally had to be postponed.
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Proof of this are the seven proposals that were filed to reduce this amount. At that moment, although they finally collapsed, they also sacrificed the request from the Casa de Nariño. This is why the urgent call is for dialogue to prevail or otherwise everything will go by decree, generating a scenario that does not help the fiscal stability of the Nation.
Budget.
iStock
Whatever path is taken, it should be noted that Congress and Casa de Nariño have not been able to reach an agreement and that while the economic commissions are asking for a cut of at least $12 billion, President Petro and his team reiterated that what is on the table “is not a product of chance” and therefore cannot be lowered, if we want to guarantee economic growth and stop the slowdown.
If this deadline is not met, President Gustavo Petro will be empowered to issue a decree regulating spending for the next year, although here again there are two interpretations, in which on the one hand they say that the $523 billion in dispute can be taken and on the other it is warned that the current regulation as a starting point, that is, the $503 billion of the current PGN.
