From the Coffee Summit that has been taking place since last Thursday in Cartagena, the Minister of Finance, Ricardo Bonilla, referred to the current situation of the Budget in Colombia and what is coming for 2025 in this matter, with the financing law in gambling and the tax alerts that have been issued, and reiterated the call for calm, highlighting that things are being done correctly.
Bonilla González pointed out that at the end of the year, the 2024 budget has a commitment of 72%, with 63% already executed and 61% paid and explained that the difference between the commitment and execution percentages lies in the investment, where budget management dynamics make this happen.
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“What is committed at a certain time has to wait several months for the product to be ready to receive and pay, so there is a difference in the two. We closely monitor and based on the results, we are also disbursing the resources,” said the official.
On the other hand, looking ahead to next year, the minister confirmed that the Budgetor 2025 will be set at $523 billion and noted that since Congress did not approve any modifications, the government can only work with the initially proposed budget.
Ministry of Finance and Public Credit.
That said, he stressed that “we are waiting for the financing bill to be processed to know what is financed and what is not financed.” It is worth remembering that days ago, this same official made it clear that if the tax reform, also known as tax reform, is not endorsed, expenses for the next term will have to be frozen, since there will be no way to support its execution.
New cuts
Taking into account that things have not gone as planned starting this year, especially with the tax collection, the analysts’ question focuses on whether the Government will make new cuts to the Budget it has in place, since although At the end of the first semester, the scissors were passed for $20 billion, this apparently will not be enough.
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Minister Ricardo Bonilla addressed these concerns and said that “in the month of May, you will remember, a suspension of the budget was made, since it began to be found that the expected collection figures did not coincide with the actual ones, today We already know that this collection will not be achieved. That suspension decree that was for $20 billion, now it must be returned to an effective cut decree.”
To be exact about how severe this adjustment will be, he stated that “I examined this cutback decree this November and we are examining it, given the difficulties of collection, we do not rule out that it could be taken up to $33 billion,” although he made it clear that it is a measure still under review.
Colombian pesos
In this way, the thesis is reaffirmed that the difference between the expected income and those actually obtained has the National Government in fiscal difficulties, which recently managed to improve its cash flow, but still maintains its deposit levels in the lowest ranges of the last two decades.
However, the Ministry of Finance confirmed that its priority is to ensure the fiscal stability of the Nation, for which they asked for help from Congress with the proposed initiatives, arguing that the economy must be reactivated and For this, resources are needed to drive investment in the coming months.
