2023-10-12 08:33:29
From the office of the Minister of Finance, Ricardo Bonilla, the investment projects that the country will prioritize and for which it will allocate resources are defined, however, for Jorge Iván González, director of National Planning, this is not the responsibility of the financial portfolio. but the one he leads.
In an interview with Bloomberg Línea, González explained that, not during this government, but for many years, the Department of National Planning was losing prominence and during the Government of Iván Duque it hit rock bottom and became a technical secretariat of the Ministry of Finance.
“The first thing is to say that the idea of the DNP when it began in the 60s with Carlos Lleras as the center of thought has been lost until reaching an extreme, which for me should never happen, and that is that the MinHacienda directs economic policy, which That was what happened in the last Government, and National Planning remained as a technical secretariat of the ministry, that is a huge deformity. The last Development Plan ended up being carried out practically in the Treasury and leaving the DNP marginalized,” said González.
For the person in charge of National Planning, this is the extreme of a process in which planning has been losing its long-term view, and he maintains that it is not resolving decisions on large investment projects.
“We have experienced it in the last 3 weeks in a dramatic way. “Large investment projects are being settled for cash reasons in the Ministry of Finance and that is fatal in the sense that we do not have a long-term perspective,” said the official.
González’s criticism lies in the fact that in his opinion the convenience of developing one or another project should fall on the DNP and after that decision the mechanism to develop it should be coordinated with the financial portfolio.
“The guarantees are now being given by the Treasury, the National Planning is not giving them, the congressmen present the project for a highway or an airport and ask to prioritize it and it is the Ministry of Finance and not the DNP that gives the guarantee or not. I think we have a long way to go before Planning is the entity that says: these are the country’s great strategic projects for the Ministry of Finance to implement because DNP already considered after a technical analysis that a certain project is strategic,” González explained.
And in the opinion of the director of National Planning, the Ministry of Finance and especially the Budget Directorate, which is part of the financial portfolio, are having an importance and hierarchy that does not correspond to them.
For González, “Planning should say this is the most important route for the country and therefore it will have all the resources that are necessary, or the railway, etc. The function of the Treasury should be to see how that project that Planning considered was a priority is paid for, they must review how the transfers are made or how the future validity periods are used, etc., but at this moment within the Treasury the Budget Directorate “It has an excessive importance and hierarchy, not only the Ministry of Finance, but, within the Treasury, the Budget Directorate, has excessive power that does not correspond to a long-term vision.”
The director insists that the withering of the DNP has been going on for several years, but insists that work must be done so that Planning can gain that guiding function within the Government because it has more discretion.
Furthermore, for him, the entity must begin to raise national debates and to achieve that it has to be an articulator of Congress and the ministries. “Planning is an entity with enormous potential despite the fact that the Treasury was marginalizing it, but the entire technical apparatus of Planning is still very strong and very powerful so it is not impossible for DNP to exercise that guiding function,” he says.
Despite his criticism of the relevance that DNP has today within the Government, he highlights that he has had fluid relations with both José Antonio Ocampo and Ricardo Bonilla. “The relationship with Minister Ocampo was wonderful because we defined the National Development Plan in a very articulated way and the entity had a lot of play, the proposals were approved between DNP and the Treasury, it was not a second hand from the Treasury. And there is also a very good relationship with Bonilla, I have known him for 40 years, the relationship is easy.”
And again he explains that “what we are saying to the Treasury is, you do not have to define whether this highway or this airport goes first, that is not the function of the Treasury, the function of that ministry is that once Planning Say that it is more important, if the highway or the airport, there between the Treasury to see how the structuring of payments is done.”
However, González narrates how the contributions of the DNP in the construction and remodeling of the Government’s flagship reforms (pension, labor, health and education) have been minimal and in fact he remembers that one of his proposals regarding said projects was ignored.
“When the first version of the pension project was presented, Minister Ocampo and Minister Cecilia met in Planning and we talked about the thresholds, but without there being a formal and explicit participation of Planning, that is, if Congress asks us for a concept Technically we will give it, but both in the Health reform and in the Pension reform there has not been, from an institutional point of view, the requirement that Planning has to give, together with the Treasury, the complementary guarantee.”
Furthermore, González said that “it has not happened with Health either, we had many discussions with the first project, we had discussions with the Ministry of Finance, with the then Minister of Education, Alejandro Gaviria, and Cecilia López. The three of us participated in discussions with Carolina Corcho, but once she leaves and the new project is presented, Planning does not intervene and has not intervened after that in either the Health project, or the Education project, or the Education project. Pensions.”
In the opinion of the director of the DNP, the institutionality as it is in the country does not ask Planning for a technical concept on the reforms. “At some point we said that labor, pensions and health should be a single package, those are opinions without any institutional impact. So for Congress it is very important that the Treasury gives the endorsement and says how much the Health reform is worth, but the opinion of Planning is not important,” González asserted.
He recalled that at the time of the proposal to unify the 3 reform issues into a single project there was no reception from his Government colleagues. “The comment was made in the council of ministers, but that was not received, in that case the Minister of Labor who has both, labor and pension, along with the health minister, did not say that they thought it was appropriate. Each reform went its own way and at that time, proposing an integration of the 3 was already impossible due to the dynamics they had been acquiring and the lack of an overall vision on the part of the entire public administration,” said González.
González maintains that “there is a structural problem of disorder” and for him proof of this is that in Colombia there is still 36% poverty, he judges that this shows “absence of planning.”
“The failure of planning has been overwhelming. It has been overwhelming because we have not been able to lift 36% of the population out of poverty. When you look at China, in 50 years they lifted 800 million people out of poverty, so you can’t tell me that lifting 36% is impossible. That the main port of Colombia, Buenaventura, has these levels of poverty is proof of failure. Magdalena Medio has been extracting oil for 50 years and lives in the midst of brutal poverty, La Guajira is another example of brutal poverty. For me, all of this is the failure of planning, Colombia has not planned, it has wasted resources,” González explained.
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