Colombia is going through a key moment in its institutional history on behalf of the Constitutional Reform to the General System of Participations (SGP), approved in 2024, which raises a deep transformation in the budgetary relationship between the Nation and territorial entities And he is currently waiting for his other half with the Competency Law.
Amid the expectation, the Comptroller General of the Republic warned this Thursday –August 31- that the success of this redesign of the State will depend on a critical condition and that the future Law of Competencies clearly defines what functions the central government will stop executing and which will assume the departments, districts and municipalities.
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This was warned by the Comptroller General, Carlos Hernán Rodríguez Becerra, during the presentation of the 376 edition of the Colombian Economy magazine, in which the fiscal, territorial and equity challenges that this new framework poses were addressed and assured that the decentralization that promotes the reform will only be viable if it is landed in a coherent functional framework, which avoids the superposition of responsibilities and allows a true territorial autonomy.
“The reform approved to the SGP constitutes an advance towards the correction of centralism, but its implementation will depend on the Organic Law of Competencies Distribute and harmonize the functions that the Nation will stop executing, ”said Rodríguez Becerra.
The economy of the regions in Colombia grows in a disparate way.
Between speech and practice
One of the points of greatest concern for the control entity is the possible contradiction between the decentralizing discourse of the reform and the practical provisions of other recent standards, such as the reform of the health system, highlighting that in this case, the legal text establishes that the administrator of the resources of the General System of Social Security in Health (ADRES) will be responsible for handling the resources of the SGP assigned to health, despite the fact that they belong to the territorial entities.
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“How will this centralization in the administration of resources be reconciled with strengthening of the territorial autonomy promoted by the recent constitutional reform of the SGP? ”, questioned the comptroller.
This tension between the central level and the territorial entities can generate, according to the Comptroller, regulatory conflicts, gaps of execution and loss of legitimacy of the new model if it is not resolved in time.
Comptroller General, Carlos Hernán Rodríguez
Another of the elements clarified by the control agency has to do with the alleged fiscal risks that some sectors have noticed before the increase in transfers to the territories, a point where from the vision of the Comptroller’s Office, these criticisms are based on an erroneous assumption in front of that the growth of the SGP necessarily implies an increase in total public spending.
“This concern is based on the assumption that total spending will grow, when in reality it is about transferring resources from the central level to the territories, according to the already decentralized competitions,” he said.
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That is, the objective of the reform is not to create new expenses, but to correct the imbalanceBrio en The distribution of functions and resources that has characterized the Colombian centralist model. Proof of this is that, while in 2003 the SGP represented 40.85% of the current income of the nation, by 2023 had fallen to 22%.
Given this, the Comptroller estimates that, between 2002 and 2025, the regions have lost $ 500 billion in constant values on behalf of the regressive reforms to the transfers system. However, the control body also warned that increasing the transferred resources does not guarantee an effective and equitable decentralization.
The economic rhythm has been marked by the fear of a fiscal crisis in the Petro era.
“So that it has a real impact on the closure of territorial gaps, it must be accompanied by controls, clear rules and local institutional strengthening. The increase in transfers to territorial entities promises to correct old inequalities, but if it is not accompanied by controls, Clear rules and institutional capacity, the remedy could aggravate the problem, ”he said.
In other words, decentralization without governance is just an illusion of change. An without conditions can reproduce, or even aggravate, the problems that are sought to be solved.
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Historical gaps
To justify his point of view, the Comptroller General presented a panorama deeply Desigual between the center of the country and its peripheral regions in which Bogotá, for example, concentrates 40% of the property tax collection and represents 26% of the national gross domestic product (GDP); making it clear that the strong economic concentration in the capital.
There is also an imbalance in industrial development, since 81% of the gross industrial product is generated in the central region of the country, while the periphery barely contributes 19%. This difference translates into less employment, less income and less opportunities for millions of people in the territories.
Colombian economy
Meanwhile, the social situation is even more worrying, since according to the figures of the DANE, in 2022 there were 106 municipalities, all located in peripheral areas, with levels of unsatisfied basic needs (NBI) greater than 75% and in some of these cases, the indicator exceeded even 90%.
This is why the Comptroller warned that these resources could lose their impact if a law of competences is not approved that clearly defines who is responsible for what and understands that the redistribution of money will only be effective if it is accompanied by an orderly and well -defined functional distribution.
Daniel Hernández Naranjo
Portfolio journalist
