Gregorio Eljatch, Secretary of the Senate of the Republicconcluded that the The amount of the General Budget of the Nation for 2025 was deniedas stated by the representative Katherine Miranda.
The congresswoman requested clarity on the process of the PGN project after the deadline for economic commissions to approve the country’s resource cap for next year expired on September 15.
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Eljatch insisted that for the amount of the Budget to be approved in the Commissions III and IV of the Senate and Houseall four must give the ‘OK’; however, if even one opposes the proposal, it is rejected.
Therefore, the Secretary of the Senate concluded that “The budget amount was denied. According to article 173 of the fifth law, in joint sessions, the commissions vote separately and the fourth Senate voted negatively, so the amount of the Budget was understood to be denied.“.
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Gregorio Eljatch, Secretary General of the Senate
Sergio Angel / Portfolio
This means that Eljatch shares the theory that Now the only thing left for President Gustavo Petro is to present the Budget via decreeHowever, there is a legal and political vacuum, since the amount of the Budget has never before been denied.
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As a result, the economic commissions decided to continue the Budget process and, according to Senator Angélica Lozano, a new amount will be finalized in the midst of the distribution of amounts for each sector. The idea of those who lead these legislative bodies is to approve the project in the first debate. And, if it is not approved in plenary sessions, the president must issue a decree as approved in the first debate.
However, other congressmen, such as Representative Miranda, claim that there is no other way to end the so-called ‘fiscal dictatorship’, as stated in the Constitution.
Why the refusal?
At the same time that in the House there were votes to approve the amount of the PGN, in the Senate there were serious doubts about thisconsidering that it was underfunded by 12 billion pesos, which meant that if that figure was approved, a tax reform in that sense would ultimately have to be approved.
One of the most reluctant opponents was the conservative Efraín Cepeda, president of Congresswho insisted that the underfunded Budget was already approved in 2023, but the Government did not comply with the collection.
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General Budget of the Nation.
iStock
“We welcomed it, we believed that the 15 billion could be raised, we granted that patent for 2024, but the same thing cannot happen every year.“, Senator Cepeda said in an interview with EL TIEMPO.
For the moment, the economic commissions are still preparing the report. and on September 25 they hope to approve the text in the first debate to take it to the plenary sessionswhere the deadline is October 20.
PORTFOLIO
*With information from EL TIEMPO – POLITICS
