Within the balances and analysis of the monetary poverty figures and extreme monetary poverty, there is an element that attracts the attention of the authorities, related to the accelerated trajectory that marks this indicator For Bogotá, which even advances faster than the national average.
In dialogue with Portafolio, the Secretary of Social Integration, Roberto Angulo, stressed that this achievement is the fruit of the optimization of the city aid model and said that now the challenges will focus on the closure of social gaps, maintaining the good step in reducing inequality.
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How do you see poverty figures in Bogotá?
Bogotá did very well in these poverty figures of the year 2024. And it went well because it reduces monetary poverty, extreme poverty and the Gini coefficient, that is, inequality is also reduced.
However, the most important thing, because in the national context also improves poverty, is that Bogotá enters an acceleration trajectory of the reduction of this indicator. Here the interesting thing and what you have to notice is that acceleration.
Bogotá led poverty reduction in 2024.
Courtesy – API
Why is that so important?
Because, said simple, not only poverty went down, but it went down more than last year and went down more than in the nation and leads us to review why we are in that reduction acceleration tunnel, which has us a good step.
To understand that there is a fact that delivers the DANE in its report, and that is what they call the decomposition of that change of poverty. Make an account that poverty reduction is a boat of two engines. An engine is growth, and the other engine is redistribution, distributive policy.
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Where is inflation?
Inflation is as if it were a wind against. So, the fight against poverty is that, it is a race of two engines with a wind against which it is inflation. When you look at Bogotá’s data, it is observed that this year the city has favorable behavior in all those factors.
Here is an issue that is inexorable, and it is that growth, in the end, is the great jalonator. The data show that even Bogotá dragged or brought one in three Colombians of the national total out of poverty. In inflation, Bogotá also has favorable behavior. That is, that wind against is also favorable.
Roberto Angulo, Secretary of Social Integration.
Courtesy – Sdis
Do you explain them in figures?
Bogotá’s numbers are impressive. Nothing more in poverty, Bogotá dropped 4.6 percentage points and that is equivalent to 352,000 people, make the population of Popayán account. And that is 1.5 times more than the nation achieved.
In extreme poverty, it dropped 1.7 percentage points, and that is equivalent to 134,000 people. It is almost double the national rhythm, in extreme poverty we fold the nation; Without forgetting that all factors are in favor. Let’s not forget that, for example, the growth of the gross domestic product during 2024 was 1.9% for Bogotá, while for the nation it was 1.7%.
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Did the new transfers model help?
We here redesign the monetary transfers policy. That is another important difference in this accelerator. While the nation decides to dismantle monetary transfers, stop paying citizen income, start paying increasingly spaced transfers, moving to community pots and all this, we started redesigning our monetary transfers, trying to focus them better in extreme poverty.
So, here we have a difference in focus with the nation and that is that monetary transfers continue, they are paid regularly and punctually and are more focused on the poorest population. While the nation dismantled the transfers, we were redesign.
Bogotá led poverty reduction in 2024.
Courtesy – API
That is why the subsidies lost strength?
As is. Even in Bogotá we were also affected by that dismantling of the nation. Remember that when they left the 10,000 homes of extreme poverty, which we put them, that was more in 2025, but since 2024 it was also deteriorating.
That fall in transfers affected us all, but we have a large buffer with the minimum guaranteed income. The district is one of the few cities that has its own shock absorber for that. We managed to increase the coverage of transfers in extreme poverty.
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So what happened to multidimensional poverty?
These multidimensional poverty figures show that all index variables improve, except health; Health access barriers. That is an issue that worries us a lot because I look that these monetary poverty figures confirm that Bogotá, within such an accelerated social change path, has already shown good food security figures.
At that point Bogotá also improves a higher rate than the nation, but what is costing us work is the barriers to access to health, which are a national phenomenon, but they impact more on Bogotá, especially since the decoupling of the health system. We have to organize and contain that problem of those barriers to access to health. But those barriers to access to health are a national phenomenon, of the entire health system.
Monetary transfers
Andrea Moreno. Time
Is more good?
I believe that Bogotá is at a very important moment of his change in living conditions. Both hunger and extreme poverty are reduced in Bogotá more than proportionally than in the national government and that is because of a much more commendable combination, much more balanced in the growth effect with the distribution effect.
When we start this government, we review how to make monetary transfers compatible with economic reactivation, because many times monetary transfers can block the same reactivation, since people do not go to work or there are incentives for people not to work. All the redesign that we undertook allowed these monetary transfers to boost the reactivation instead of going against.
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Will they rely on the private sector?
Bogotá’s results show that there is a pact, there is an agreement between the productive fabric and the public sector. Because the growth points are putting the private sector and the productive fabric that is putting the most important poverty reduction engine. But the public sector is enabling some channels so that this growth is in the hands of the poor.
And we have said it many times, the productive fabric cannot be the enemy of poverty reduction. The productive sector is the ally and these are the data of Bogotá. Bogotá has that alliance of the private sector, growth and distributive channels; that today translate into remarkable growth.
Daniel Hernández Naranjo
Portfolio journalist
