2023-08-23 05:00:00
Manizales is considered one of the cities with the highest quality of life in Colombia, thanks to the ease of mobility, citizen security, access to medical care, the availability of public services, labor formality, inclusion and access to higher education. We people from Manizale have read and heard these testimonies for decades, but who affirms this?
Manizales Cómo Vamos, an entity belonging to the Colombian Network of Cities Cómo Vamos, was born with the purpose of generating reliable information on issues of quality of urban life and citizen participation. The entity released the last report on quality of life in Manizales for the year 2022, where the main variables measured in this indicator were exposed. These measurements, in addition to informing the people of Manizale and foreigners the figures to know how the city is in different aspects, are of vital importance for the administrations, who are in charge of creating and executing public policies for the generation of development. and economic and social equity.
According to the report, Manizales continues to excel in quality of life compared to other capital cities in the country. However, there will always be opportunities for improvement, so in my opinion, there are five fundamental issues to take into account in this new quality of life report: demography, poverty, education, employment and economic environment.
Regarding demography, Manizales is the capital city of Colombia with the highest rate of aging by 2022, which represents a significant challenge for the city. Here the challenge lies in knowing how to project a new city model in terms of health and conditioning of social and urban infrastructure, to meet the needs of the older population segment.
Regarding poverty, although Manizales and Caldas are in a privileged position in relation to multidimensional poverty measurements, an integral indicator that gathers five heterogeneous variables; extreme poverty, a variable that in my opinion is where the magnifying glass should be put, has not had the same luck. The above is due
mainly due to the lack of forceful actions in this component, since extreme poverty has not found significant solutions since 2013.
On the education side, the measurements regarding satisfaction for basic and secondary education were 84% and for higher education, they were 89% in 2022. Although these measurements are high, both represented setbacks to what reported with respect to 2021, since for basic and secondary education, satisfaction was 97% and for higher education it was 97%, figures that in turn had been increasing since 2020.
The challenge is to resume the path of growth in these indicators, since it has been shown that education is one of the best social elevators today.
With regard to employment, in 2022 of every 100 Manizales who considered that things were on the right track in the city, 25 stated that it was easy to find a job. Manizales is the city with the highest labor formality rate in the country and the city with the lowest unemployment rate in the Coffee Region, with 10.1% compared to 11.2% in
Pereira and 12.1% from Armenia. The unemployment rate in Manizales recovered its pre-pandemic level, reaching the lowest unemployment rate since 2015. However, the city continues to move away from the strategy of reaching single digit figures, also bearing in mind the gaps once morest women and youth, with unemployment rates of 12% and 17% respectively.
Regarding the economic environment, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Caldas in 2022 was 15,432 billion pesos, a figure that grew 6.1% compared to 2021, representing the third highest growth rate since 2012. Regarding exports, these went from USD 1,105,971 in 2021 to USD 1,211,412 in 2022, reflecting an increase of approximately 9.53%. Exports in Caldas participate with a rate above 20% of GDP since 2020, in addition the department’s trade balance is positive. Although Caldas continues to be the leading department in the region in terms of the share of national GDP and exports, efforts must be redoubled through strategies aimed at the business fabric to achieve diversification in exports of both products and destinations.
Although the efforts of the public and private sectors, unions, and academia, have allowed Manizales to continue improving its qualification as the city with the best quality of life in the country, the challenges that must be worked on are clear. May the city continue to lead in these regards. It is regarding the will and the articulated work and public policies that allow perceptible improvements in the pillars mentioned here for the benefit of all.
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