In his speech at the installation of Congress for the period 2024 – 2025, President Gustavo Petro said that he assumed his political responsibility for “have put” Olmedo López at the National Risk and Disaster Management Unit (UNGRD).
(You may be interested in: The opposition’s harsh response to Petro’s speech at the opening of Congress).
“I did not expect from Olmedo an attitude like the one we have found. The administration is seriously committed to recovering the money and, obviously, it is up to justice. That a man degrades himself in this way is terrible,” said the head of State before the plenary session of Congress.
However, he said that this case of corruption should provide a lesson to keep our guard up against new episodes that threaten public funds.
(Besides: ‘This new legislature is really important for the economic development of the country’).
“Olmedo cannot be just a bad memory, it is an experience that must teach us to be on guard against any outrage against the people’s money. I got tired of waiting for the climate victims that we have had in this Government to have some kind of compensation and nothing ever came, there was another agenda. The money went somewhere else. (…) It was a way of stealing money. And there is a political responsibility in that and I have to assume it and for that, as a representative of the people, I ask for forgiveness.”added the head of state.
President Gustavo Petro, at the installation of the Congress of the Republic 2024 – 2025.
Cesar Melgarejo/ Portfolio
‘Suicide for the economy’
In his speech he also referred to aspects of the economy and stressed, once again, the need to replace the model based on the extraction and production of fossil fuels.
“Clinging to producing fossil fuels would be suicide for the economy,” said the head of state this Saturday.
On the subject of economic production, the president also expressed the importance of moving forward with agrarian reform and spoke about the decision of the Constitutional Court that struck down a key article in this project on Friday.
“Our law does not allow for agrarian reform, even worse with the decisions taken yesterday that overturned one of the articles that you approved in the PND and that tried to ensure that the vacant lands were not overrun.”.
The head of state pointed out that this is a crucial issue for the peace of the country and for stopping violence.
“Those who come here from excluded territories, not from rich regions, but from places where poverty exists, know that if they do not solve the problem of poverty and exclusion, talking about peace is nonsense, it is meaningless rhetoric.”he stressed.
Energy, agriculture and industry, the axes of the recovery
The President also He raised the need for economic recovery to be accompanied by adjustments to regulations such as the Electricity Law, agrarian reform and the promotion of industry.
“Statistics of 9% annual growth are not to be ignored, they must be sustained. Never before had it gone beyond those levels and that is what I call leaving extraction to move on to production. It is not for nothing that the DANE showed that where poverty fell the most last year was precisely in the rural world…”.
Likewisesaid that it is positive that tourism has become the second economic line of the productive structure.
He explained that part of this good result is due to forced investments. “Some people don’t like the issue of forced investment in Colombia… they are in the agricultural sector and that is what the Agrarian Bank and Finagro have been financed with and that is why we have very good positive rates in agriculture, but why don’t we do it in industry, housing and tourism? If the banks are keeping the money and that can bankrupt them, then now is the time, even if it is for two or three years, to build that same system.”he said.
(Besides: President Petro was booed for arriving late to the military parade on July 20).
Emphasizing that the country is not doing well in industry, contrary to the results achieved in tourism and the agricultural sector, President Petro explained that it is necessary to produce a social dialogue in order to achieve its reactivation, referring to the fact that the real interest rate is rising because inflation has been reduced faster than the Bank of the Republic in lowering the nominal interest rate.
In his opinion, the increase in the real interest rate is ‘killing’ demand, especially for the most sensitive goods such as housing, vehicles and household appliances..
He said that today the increase in inflation has two speculative drivers: that of rents and electricity generators. “Because we do not get involved in controlling real estate speculation or in electricity generation, which primarily affects the Colombian Caribbean.”.
In this regard, he said that the Government and Congress can work on changing regulations to pave the way for the reactivation of the economy, which is why he said that the electricity law must be changed, for example.
“We will not be able to develop the industry if we have high interest rates and high electricity rates. Electricity and financial costs are fundamental to the cost of the industry.”he warned.
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