The balance of expenses and income presented last week by the Ministry of Finance is still unable since the government would be ignoring the rules of the game agreed several years ago on this topic.
While the country is in the expectation that the Autonomous Fiscal Rule Committee issues a formal concept regarding the update of the financial plan and the calculations with which the Ministry of Finance justifies that it fulfilled the limits of the fiscal rule in 2024, a new Document known by Portfolio realizes that The established parameters for the only time transactions were not met.
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This is Act 719, issued by the National Council of Fiscal Policy (Confis), the same body that the minhacienda says that it endorsed its accounts, in which the guidelines are established to identify the famous transactions of only the only time (TUV) or “One -Off ”and has the review of entities such as the DIAN, the CARF, National Planning and the Administrative Department of the Presidency (Dapre).
Clear rules
In this document, in the possession of portfolio, both the Ministry of Finance, As the Confis, agreed on what are the expenses that cannot be accounted for as TIV and established a “decision tree” that should be followed when making any type of decision on the inclusion or not of items under this category .
“TUVs can be defined as measures that have a transitory effect on the fiscal result, which do not lead to sustained and predictable changes in the intertemporal situation of public finances; That is, they have no implications in fiscal sustainability, ”says the Act, issued on April 26, 2022.
Ministry of Finance and Public Credit
Private archive
Taking into account that when talking about transactions once the interpretations to the norm can become “ambiguous and difficult”, both the minhacienda, which by then was under the baton of José Manuel Restrepo, current rector of the EIA University, and the Confis, established a series of criteria that They were based on recommendations of the fiscal rules mission of the International Monetary Fund.
Specifically, it was established that the only time transactions are “intrinsically non -recurring”, that “the nature of the only time cannot be decreed by law or by an autonomous decision of the government”, that “the volatile components of income or expenses should not be considered as transactions of only time “and that” deliberate policy actions that increase the deficit do not classify, as a rule, as Ten. “
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In the same way, it was regulated that “only the transactions that have A significant impact on fiscal balance should be considered as only time. ” It is where the Ministry of Finance is being used to justify its accounts, taking as reference the abrupt fall of the tax collection.
Finally, when reviewing what can be taken under the UX, it was made clear that they must be exceptional events, which cannot be a direct consequence of normative provisions or decisions of the government, except in natural disaster attention, they will take in account the disposal of assets and will not include volatile components of tax revenues and expenses.
Diego Guevara, Minister of Finance
Courtesy – API
Was it fulfilled or not?
In order to establish whether these parameters were followed in the calculations of Minister Diego Guevara, Portfolio consulted several analysts, starting with José Manuel Restrepo, predecessor in that portfolio and responsible for the minutes, who not only made clear That under these rules the fiscal rule was not fulfilled, but instead regretted the growth of the debt.
“Fiscal rule was not fulfilled in 2024 and that standard is being violated by the way of a methodological adjustment that goes against the design of the rule and what was agreed against what were transactions only once in the confis ”Said Restrepo Abondano.
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For this economist, “it is unlikely that qualifiers and investors They create this version. A government that sends a negative investment message and the financiers generates uncertainty in the markets. This represents a significant risk of increase in the cost of debt and a loss of credibility in macroeconomic management. ”
On the other hand, for Henry Amorocho, a professor at the University of Rosario, he brought up Law 1472 of 2011, highlighting that it is made clear that the TUVs must correspond to unpredictable, not planned events and that only occur once, as disasters natural or unexpected economic changes.
Colombian pesos
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“This does not apply to the case of pricing volatility. It is very normal that in economic situations there are situations of change in prices, especially in what has to do with change rate, with interest rate, with inflation, with other things, that is what is what It is associated with the phenomena of volatility, but unpredictability is another matter, They are situations that only happen once and that is why they are called transactions once, ”he explained.
Thus, he warned that “now everything depends on what is reported in the general balance of income and expenses, which, when it is complete, is referred to the Comptroller General of the Republic so that this entity reviews the concept and its point of view, under the rules of strict fiscal control and those that have to do with national accounting ”.
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Finally, for Jorge Restrepo, professor at the Javeriana Universitytaking as reference the “decision tree that agreed the government and the CARF in that act of 2022, only the fall in the non -deductibility of royalties by decision of the State Council could be taken in the range of the TUV.
“There is no sanction to the national government here, it is a matter of credibility, since when it went out to say that it complied with the fiscal rule when it did not comply, based on arguments that are not true, what it is doing is sticking A shot in the foot because it affects its own credibility to buyers of public debt in Colombia. And then it has a tremendous effect because it will affect interest rates, ”he said.
In this way, if the parameters established in the minutes known by this means, more than 80% of the items that the Ministry of Finance took as transactions of the only time would not meet the requirements to be and They would increase the deficit by more than $ 20 billion as the case checked.
