The Minister of Finance, Jose Manuel Restrepo presented the Financial plan for 2022, in which he delivered the updated fiscal projections for this year.
“I can anticipate that the 2022 fiscal scenario presents a better forecast”, said the head of the Treasury portfolio, who raised expectations in terms of collection, and also announced a better outlook for debt and of fiscal deficit.
(See: Duque’s criticism of the “sudden” rate hike made by Banrep).
In addition, Restrepo raised the projection of increase by 2022, placing it at 5 %.
“In the first place, the tax collection will no longer be $169 billion, it will be $183 billion.”, said Restrepo, who added that this result is the result of several things: “The Social Investment Law that contemplates new instruments in the fight against evasion and smuggling and is also the result of the modernization of the Dian, and in general of its management in tax collection”, he indicated.
According to the minister, the expectation that the Treasury has is that, against 2021, there will be growth in the net collection of 13% and assured that the results of January this year already look positive.
“Anticipating this is already possible with real facts: in the month of January of this 2022, based on the cash collection recorded by Public Credit and also considering that this figure is still pending from other additional sources, the growth in collection has been 24%. This is a sign that we are in line with the purposes we have in that collection value.”, he indicated.
(See: 62.3% of households could not buy major basic goods in December).
FISCAL DEFICIT
The second point Restrepo referred to is a lower level of fiscal deficit as a percentage of GDP, that if you take into account that in the Medium Term Fiscal Framework (MFMP) last year a deficit of 7% was expected for 2022. Now the estimate will be 6.2% of GDP.
“This represents an effort of 0.8 percentage points and, in the primary balance, this will mean that the deficit will no longer be 3.5%, but 2.6%. It is important to note that there is an improvement with respect to the Fiscal Framework in the primary balance of nearly $8 trillion, which shows a gradual adjustment and an important effort in the direction of our higher purpose, which is an adjustment in the public finances of our country.Restrepo said.
The minister also highlighted how they are going to have between $7 billion and $10 billion that were planned as transitory, but are now permanent, which implies a better performance from the fiscal point of view.
(See: “The most important thing in labor matters is to continue with investment”: Duque).
“This implies an advance not only qualitative, but quantitative, and would imply, in general terms, an effort of the order of 1.6 percentage points of GDP“, He said.
José Manuel Restrepo, Minister of Finance.
DEBT
Restrepo also pointed out that thanks to the pre-financing of the amortizations made and the better result expected for 2022 will generate a positive result in terms of debt.
“If in the MFMP we planned to go to the markets to collect $102 billion in financing, we will no longer go for that amount, now, in this particular case of 2022, we will go for $75.9 billion. That means a 26% drop in less debt financing needs by 2022.”, said the head of the Treasury portfolio.
Restrepo also celebrated that the gross debt It has already been showing a significant decrease, which will lead to closing 2022 with a level of 62.7%, something that was initially forecast for 2032.
(See: The Nation’s debt, in 2021, reached 61.5% of GDP).
“We made progress on something very important, in our MFMP of June 2021 we expected that from 2024 we would reduce our level of debt to stabilize it at 62.8% by 2032, 10 years later. With what happened in 2021 and 2022, we will ensure that this gradual and orderly adjustment of public finances is being achieved more quickly: the gross debt will not have to wait for 2024 to fall, but rather it began to occur last year and will continue the path decrease”, explained the minister.
BRIEFCASE
