Duque Minhacienda responds to Petro for statement on deficit

The former Minister of Finance, José Manuel Restrepoof the government of Iván Duque, responded this Sunday, September 11, to the statements made in the morning by President Gustavo Petro about the country’s deficit.

(In context: President Petro announces that gasoline prices will rise in the country).

The former official referred to Petro’s statements, who stated that “the fuel price stabilization deficit due to non-payment by the previous government is 10 billion per quarter. That is almost 40 billion annually. Almost half of the national budget deficit“.

“President, it is very important to return to what we shared with you in junction and that I personally gave you with the Medium-Term Fiscal Framework (Chapter 2). There you can see that we paid 14.2 billion of the deficit before leaving and we left 28.5 billion budgeted as well as other sources of payment”, Restrepo told Petro.

Faced with this situation, the president of the left had declared that one of the measures would be increase the price of gasoline to “reduce the irresponsibly accumulated deficit”.

(Read: Weak finances and high trade deficit, country’s challenges).

In response, Restrepo assured that “During the pandemic, having guaranteed fuel price stabilization prevented inflation of an additional 5 percentage points and thereby affecting the most vulnerable and the recovery of the country’s MSMEs. Similar processes followed in many countries around the world.“.

The former minister also clarified to Petro that they had left a neat process in response to this issue and “we leave it reflected in the budget and with short and long-term measures.”

Along with this, he pointed out that “In the Fiscal Framework and in two drafts of the decree that I left delivered during the junction, there is material to “build from what has been built” and take a step forward in compliance with the fiscal rule, without affecting the vulnerable or the economic recovery.a”.

(Keep reading: Venezuela authorizes the return of flights from Colombia).

Finally, the president would have affirmed that half of the national budget deficit was due to the growing subsidy to gasoline consumers. For this reason, he stated: “The other side of not raising gasoline prices and increasing the fund’s deficit is allowing hunger and poverty to increase in Colombia” and he proposed to Congress “to separate the collection of taxes on gasoline from the price indexation of gasoline to mitigate the impact on the consumer”.

BRIEFCASE