Former President Álvaro Uribe’s criticism of the 2025 minimum wage increase

After failing to reach an agreement, on December 24, 2025, the President of the Republic, Gustavo Petro, decreed the increase in the minimum wage for next year. The increase was 9.5%, which went from being in $1,300,000 to $1,423,500.

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With this value, former President Álvaro Uribe criticized this increase and pointed out that a high minimum wage may not be durable over time.

“For workers to have a better income that is lasting, such as a higher minimum wage, a shorter work day, companies and employers need to have reduced taxes, less rigid labor standards, security, austere and transparent governments, with convinced defense of private initiative and coherent speeches and actions”, the former president pointed out in his X account.

He added that if a reduction in taxes is not achieved for companies in the country, it could have a great impact on the Colombian labor market.

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“Otherwise, the formal income of workers is reduced in informal and precarious jobs, in part-time contracts or a few days a week, without Sundays, without holidays, without social security. We repeat: a peso of investment by the employer or salary for the worker is better than a peso of taxes to the State, especially when there is waste and corruption.”he pointed out.

He was followed by the President of the Republic, Gustavo Petro, who referred to the reduction of taxes for the country’s companies.

“It’s a shame that your Álvaro bench sank the financing law where we reduced the income tax for all companies in Colombia. From 35% to 30%”, mentioned in his X account.

Controversy

Earlier, former President Iván Duque pointed out that the largest increase that has been generated in terms of the minimum wage was in 2022 when he was the head of state. According to Duque, the real increase was 4.4%, which reached $1,000,000.

“In 2022 (set for December 2021), we achieved the largest real increase in the minimum wage in the last 50 years, an increase that not even those who call themselves “progressives” have been able to surpass. Our increase coincided with the year of greatest growth in the history of Colombia”, added the former president.

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However, this was refuted by Gustavo Petro who said that it is not true that the largest increase in real terms in the minimum wage was presented in the last Government.

“Here is Duque’s big lie, about which he is aware, and which some analysts eat whole. Confuse the norm as it seeks to establish a minimum wage, with the economic concept of a real minimum wage. In economics, the current year’s minimum wage is not compared with last year’s inflation, but with that of the year in which the salary was valid. If the data is handled this way, the year 2022 was not the year with the highest real minimum wage in history but one in which the minimum wage fell 3%. “It is the year of hunger in Colombia,” he reviewed on his X account.