2024-02-10 04:02:27
Added to the extensive investment needs in works that the country requires now is a mess with the 2024 general budget, which would have billions of resources trapped due to an inconsistency in the liquidation decree that would not be in accordance with the rules and that, Therefore, it requires an urgent solution.
The Comptroller General’s Office has already initiated requests to the Ministry of Finance to obtain explanations related to nearly 13 billion pesos of the investment item that were left in a free bag, with the risk that they might be used as a kind of petty cash, from which public money might be taken for any expense.
This bag is what is called a global item, something that is part of the technique with which the budget is prepared, anticipating that at the time of approving public resources for the following year there is still not complete clarity with certain expenses, for example, the cost of the public payroll with the new defined salary increases.
The Congress of the Republic approves the general budget, but, subsequently, the Executive must issue a liquidation decree with a specific annex on spending. | Photo: GUILLERMO TORRES
But in these global items there is also a box that arouses suspicion, and it is the one that has a certain relationship with what was previously known as parliamentary aid and indicative quotas – which were removed from the scene in the 1991 Constitution -, in part because They lent to political clientelism.
The Constitutional Court issued a ruling in which it said that global items are, or provisions for, what at the time of preparing the budget is unknown, whether in amount or unforeseen (a natural disaster, for example), or for the regional development, and they are the ones that parliamentarians fight in the Congress of the Republic when the budget is processed. In any case, they cannot receive them directly, but rather they will have to be executed through the territorial entities.
Something new
The budgetary mess that exists now seems to be unprecedented. In the aforementioned budget liquidation decree, in which appropriations must be detailed and expenses defined, the complete required drawing was not made, which, for some public finance technicians consulted by SEMANA, might lead to a demand for unconstitutionality.
This is an inconsistency that, assuming that everything that is done can be undone, has a solution, but it must be defined promptly, due to the question that lawyers are already asking themselves: might it put a stop to a good part of the execution? of public resources for the works that Colombia needs?
The truth is that “what happened – applying the principle of good faith – can be taken as an error, but the Executive has the power to recognize the error and correct it with a new decree,” explained a jurist who asked to reserve his name.
The first inconsistency arises because the budget settlement decree must be accompanied by an annex detailing what each peso is going to be spent on. And the Government did not do it that way, but instead of a table with disaggregations, those 13 billion were placed within the body of the decree, in an article of a few lines, which, in the opinion of former Minister of Finance Juan Camilo Restrepo, It would leave the door open for these global items “to be broken down and distributed by the president, according to his political affections or disaffections.”
Opacity?
These are appropriate resources for the transportation, finance and education sectors, but without further specifications, which led the Fiscal Observatory of the Javeriana University to point out that “the omission of details in the budget calls into question its transparency.”
Ricardo Bonilla, Minister of Finance | Photo: Youtube Stream
The Minister of Finance, Ricardo Bonilla, told this medium that not including the specifications of these global items in the annex was not an omission, but rather “a prioritization exercise” (of investments), a message that is in line with the opinion of Congresswoman Olga Lucía Velásquez, who for several years has been a member of the commissions that study and approve the budget in the Legislature. “I lean towards good faith, therefore, I think that the Ministry of Finance sought to protect the investment items so that they were not used in operating expenses.”
The head of public finances was emphatic in pointing out that “there is no opacity in the budget. The decree is including everything that Congress approved, which approves global items. There is a discussion regarding priorities, which arises from the examination of the execution of projects, such as the case of the Mulaló-Logoguerrero (road), in which the money is in trust and we need it elsewhere,” he said.
Filigree strategy?
The problem would not be the absence of a breakdown of the global items mentioned for these three sectors, since, in the long run, as they are mentioned in an article of the decree, they would have the same binding force as those noted in the annex.
The background, as explained by a budget expert, is that “the rule on this issue says that the heads of the entities and their boards of directors, in the execution process, have the power to modify the annex that contains the details of the expenditure. But since said expense was not specified in the text, that power disappears. Consequently, only the president of the republic might make modifications.”
Some experts’ points of view estimate that it might have been a strategy made with conscience (and filigree), in the context in which President Gustavo Petro is in the middle of a strong opposition that leaves him little room to act.
Sources consulted start from the fact that the Colombian president has his focus on some expenses for issues promised in the campaign, but since he did not see all his priorities recorded in the budget accounts, he asked for an alternative, which in turn would be related with the resignation of Jorge Iván González, director of National Planning, an entity that is in charge of being eminently technical. The solution at hand was to add these items in some areas of some sectors, so that he might later decide where the silver”.
Small detail, there is a box left to fill
This alternative has a risk and that is that on these items there are already established contracts and commitments (with future validity), and there are compensation clauses when the terms in which they were agreed upon are not met,” explained the budget expert. And he added that “when they become payable, default interest will begin to accrue and may even end in lawsuits, if they do not resolve it soon.” The controversy is such that some analysts point out that public entities would have no way of meeting budgetary obligations as they came out. the decree, while Velásquez sent the opposite message.
However, the source consulted explains that the budget is executed through the integrated financial information system, which is very strict and parameterized, organized into four components: program, subprogram, project and subproject.
The global items were included in the subprojects, but without any specified projects, which is why “the remedy that was sought so that the president might have resources for what he was not supported for, was worse than the disease,” said the expert. , who explained that the system rejects subprojects if the project field is empty. Consequently, that amount of execution resources would be trapped: “neither for what the president says, nor to pay the obligations planned to be executed.” Everything, for now, is speculation. The Comptroller’s magnifying glass will be key.
Forgot | Photo: Getty Images
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