Petro comes out to mediate after controversy over the use of pension savings

After the controversy unleashed by the president of Colpensiones, Jaime Dussán, who stated during an interview that the money from Colombian pension savings could be used to finance projects such as the train from Barranquilla to Soledad, President Gustavo Petro came out this Monday, December 26 to clarify those statements and denied that the money that is in Colpensiones today is spent on Infrastructure.

(Colpensiones: criticism for the use that would be given to pension savings).

“It is not true that the savings that the government makes from its transfers to Colpensiones today will be spent tomorrow, with the reform, on infrastructure”wrote the president through his Twitter account.

“That is what private pension funds do today with billions of pesos”he added.

According to Petro, it would not be the money that Colombians have in the funds that would go to infrastructure projects, but what would eventually be saved by not having to transfer money from the National Budget to cover pension expenses from Colpensiones.

“Only in the first two years we will spend half of the budget savings to reduce the fiscal deficit that we inherited to reduce the costs of national debt and thus produce a second budget savings that can be allocated to investment in infrastructure”Petro said.

“By achieving that part of the contributions that are made to private funds go, from the reform, to Colpensiones, guaranteeing the pension of the contributors, it is possible to reduce the part of the budget that the government turns to Colpensiones” , added the president on his Twitter account.

(Pension savings would be used to make the Buenaventura – Barranquilla train).

Saturday, Jaime Dussán assured that in 2023 the Government will play it for the pension reform and said, among other things, that the money that Colombians have in private pension funds could be used for social projects and the construction of projects such as the train from one coast to another that Petro proposed in the campaign and that earned him at the time serious criticism from infrastructure experts.

Dussán even suggested that Colpensiones could become a bank “first and second floor”.

The mention of the train project raised questions for Dussán, since it revived a campaign outing that, in the opinion of experts, is not only impractical from the point of view of infrastructure and the environment, but could also be unprofitable, which in turn In the end, it would represent the loss of pension savings for Colombians.

Juan Carlos Echeverry, former Minister of Finance and former presidential candidate, stated in this regard: “What gives Mr. Dussán the right to waste everyone’s savings? Invest my 40-year pension savings in a train between Buenaventura and Barranquilla, impossible to build and with negative profitability? That is equivalent to throwing our savings down the drain.”.

(What Petro thinks about raising the pension age in Colombia).

The former Minister of Finance, Juan Camilo Restrepo Salazar, described for his part as “a capital nonsense” Dussán’s proposal and said that this “pharaonic work” It would be worth up to 700 billion pesos.

Contrary to what the President had said about the pension reform, Dussán also stated that there would only be one public administrative entity in the system. “We are going to create a single pension system in Colombia and look for a transition regime so that all those who have the right to retire join Colpensiones”said.

What had been talked about up to now was that part of the contributions of the people who receive the highest salary in Colombia should go to Colpensiones, but leaving open the possibility that they could continue contributing to private funds for the excess value.

“The division in the last law that allowed the presence of private funds and public funds has generated a difference and a lying attraction (…), private pension funds receive savings, but do not retire”, Dussan said.

BRIEFCASE
With Policy information