The director of the National Planning Department, Alexander López, represented the government of President Gustavo Petro this week in the 2024 Regional Policy Dialogue “Smart contracting for quality public spending in Latin America and the Caribbean”, organized by the Inter-American Bank of Development (IDB) in the United States and there He explained what for him are some of the reasons why many in the country are talking about poor investment execution.
According to López Maya, since this administration began, the priority in the Casa de Nariño has been to focus on the most remote regions in order to bring the development and social programs of the State there, which he maintains has not been an easy task. since they are communities, in their concept, historically forgotten, where there is much to do and great social barriers to overcome.
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That said, he also explained the policies for inclusion in public investment that they are implementing, in order to promote the incorporation of popular organizations in public purchases and state contracting, the new mechanisms for monitoring and evaluating investment. public.
Likewise, he maintained that improving the General Royalties System to bring more resources to the regions, is another of the fronts in which they have been working and in which they already have notable advances that will very soon translate into municipalities and departments with lower poverty indicators.
Investment
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“In addition to having powerful entities, good evaluation mechanisms and a whole series of tools to monitor and evaluate the public procurement policy and state contracting, we must have committed officials, have officials who care about public resources and people. . But it is also essential to include the community and this is what we are doing in Colombia,” said López.
Change of course
The participation of the Director of National Planning occurred in a panel with representatives from Brazil, Guatemala, El Salvador and the IDB. There he also took the opportunity to highlight the importance of including the communities not only in the construction of the works and the provision of services, but in monitoring the public investment made in the territories.
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To better explain his point of view, he socialized the progress that the country has had in all the regulations of Public-Popular Associations and Dynamic Procurement Systems (Articles 100, 101 and 102 of the National Development Plan Law – PND) , as well as in the promotion of Solidarity Agreements and contracting with Community Action organizations and told how the contracting capacity of indigenous organizations and ethnic groups has been expanding.
“We have changed the direction of investment and today we are redirecting it to the most remote territories and most excluded social groups. And executing in the cities is not the same as in the territory, it is much more complex, but we are doing it,” he stated.
Regions
Julian Espinosa
Finally, Alexander López explained that now each sector has to report to Planning on a weekly basis, “a detailed report that accounts for the efforts, policies, actions and guidelines carried out by the entities in line with the Government Program and indicates the programs , projects and resources that the entity will allocate and/or execute at the municipal level.”
This official closed by saying that they are currently working on a “major reform to the contracting system in the country, which will seek to make contracting be much more agile but also much safer.”
