Colombian Lawmakers Reject Government’s 2025 Budget Proposal

The Colombian Senate’s economics committee has on Wednesday, 11th of September, 2024 thrown out the government’s proposed 2025 budget, arguing that the Andean country will not be able to raise the proposed sum amid lower-than-projected tax collection.

At the end of July, Colombia’s finance ministry presented a proposed budget to Congress for next year worth 523 trillion pesos ($122 billion).

According to Reuters, the budget was rejected even after the finance ministry on Tuesday presented a new fiscal reform proposal to lawmakers to raise some additional 12 trillion pesos ($2.8 billion), which the government says would finance the budget.

But the majority of lawmakers sitting on economic commissions in both the Senate and the lower house, who were weighing the bill jointly on Wednesday, said government efforts to raise more funds, including plans to tackle evasion and avoidance, are not realistic.

“We cannot approve an unfinanced proposal, the product of the irresponsibility of President (Gustavo) Petro,” said Senator Carlos Abraham Jimenez, of the right-leaning Radical Change party.

Petro on Tuesday said he would set the budget by decree if Congress rejected it.

“The country needs seriousness, justification and certain sources when it comes to approving budgets with values like the one presented today, if it’s not like that we have to reject,” said Senate president Efrain Cepada, of the Conservative party. “This isn’t personal, it’s the minimum demanded in congress.”

The Senate’s economic commission rejected the budget’s value by 12 votes to one, after which a vote by the house committee was not needed.