After 20 years of having aspired to the Presidency, and after being kidnapped by the former FARC between 2002 and 2008, Ingrid Betancourt announced this week her intention to arrive at the Casa de Nariño. The pre-candidate entered the race through the Hope Center Coalition and proposes to bet on a green economy and simplify the tax system, among other issues.
(Also read: Presidential 2022: Ingrid Betancourt is launched and Dilian withdraws).
What motivates her to come back?
The love and belief that The Centro Esperanza Coalition is the new political space that can transform the country. I see the political scenario in a schematic way: there are the ideological extremes, which are polarizing and are the same; and a center with a collective proposal and an essential commitment that is the fight against corruption. Colombia is changing, the peace process and the pandemic allowed us to see the reality of the country and measure the damage that corruption does, we are kidnapped by it, and we have to free ourselves.
How do you see the country’s economy today?
We have a contradiction, an economy that is doing well, recovering what was lost in the pandemic, but also disastrous public finances, with limited possibilities for a solution. We have to be creative and turn crises into opportunities. The world is in an environmental crisis, all countries have to go through an energy transformation and Colombia can generate solutions. I want Colombia to be the first green country, that implies a reengineering of the entire accounting system, so that the cost of pollution is in the Nation’s accounts.
(What’s more: What does Petro’s proposal to create an anti-oil front consist of?).
This will allow us to take advantage of what the international community is currently offering: carbon credits as a transition method so that countries that have to reduce CO2 emissions, but they cannot make an abrupt decrease, they can buy credits from countries that are generating CO2-capturing industries and production schemes that reduce emissions. This implies making our agriculture a large system, promoting products with the greatest potential to capture carbon, and using that structure to export those carbon bonds.
What is your position on oil?
Ecopetrol is essential. The company is innovating to mitigate the impact of extraction. in my government we will go further and sell a green oil. We are not only going to calculate the emission, but in its consumption we will buy the credits to mitigate its effect, and we will sell an oil whose pollution will already be compensated.
We must get out of the tax ‘reformitis’, prioritize our resources and have good administrative management
Is another tax required?
We have to get out of the tax ‘reformitis’. If we defeat corruption, we will prioritize our resources and have good administrative management and put aside that excess of reforms. It is necessary to think of a different scheme, our tax rules have created many inconsistencies. The direction that I propose, towards a green economy, will require other types of incentives and will allow us to clean up the fiscal space so that we have a true policy, because what we have is a distribution of handouts. There is a problem of evasion and it is necessary to make it easier for the citizen to pay taxes and give companies certainty. The idea is a simplified, friendly and digital system.
(Also read: Juan Carlos Echeverry ‘takes a step to the side’ in the presidential race).
How could poverty be reduced?
Colombia has to think of other income redistribution schemes. We have bet on the bureaucracy, we create policies, and all this is processed by a series of entities, which charge a corruption toll, but also waste. We have a traditionally paternalistic state that has created economic dependencies of a part of the population. To mitigate poverty, systems must be created, hopefully digital, in which Colombians receive the money, and to a certain extent they can prioritize their spending, but also have freedom of choice regarding which school, housing scheme or health provider they want to go to. . The great transformation is to return that initiative to the citizen.
How to reduce the unemployment rate?
Companies have cornered their labor supply. If we want to give employment to half of the Colombians who are outside of economic prosperity, we have to think of an economy for them. With mechanisms for people who do not have access to resources and only have their time to live, that is, their work. One strategy is that access to credit is given under conditions different from those of the banking system, and create a digitized system that allows access to credits not based on capital, but on the hours of work they can perform.
(What’s more: The ballots for the 2022 Congress elections are ready).
To capitalize on those hours there are projects to boost that human economy. One that is very important to me is housing for the 8 million displaced people clustered on the outskirts of cities, and that has costs in terms of providing public services. New satellite cities must be created in territorial spaces that belong to the Nation, with access to education, health and transportation, and we are going to build them with the work of the people who are going to build their homes and institutions. The other big project for improving the labor system is building a great railway system.
Laura Lucia Becerra Elejale
