Former minister Juan Camilo Restrepo criticized the National Development Plan: “it’s more statism and less private sector”

The presentation to the Congress of the Republic of the National Development Plan (NDP) 2022-2026 “Colombia, world power of life” which will be debated until May 7, 2023 and sets the course for the Government of Gustavo Petro He continues to give a lot to say, mainly because of the powers that the president has requested for six months to be able to modify entities, institutions, programs, improve the containment of the natives, put the San Juan de Dios hospital into operation, among others.

It didn’t go very well for several quarters. For example, the former presidential candidate Enrique Gomez manifested is a carbon copy of what he did Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, since he was given extraordinary six-month powers to do, according to Gómez, basically whatever he wants.

However, the director of the National Planning Department (DNP), Jorge Ivan Gonzalezsaid The weather that the “plan does not give the president dictatorial powers, on the contrary, it is a question of looking for solutions and obviously Congress will define which ones and for how long”.

Today, the former Deputy Minister of Finance Juan Camilo Restrepo He made a sharp criticism and assured that the PND does not take much account of the private sector and favors the State.

“If we had to sum up the development plan, in a few words, we could say: more and more statism and less and less private sector,” Restrepo said via Twitter.

In turn, in a column for Change, noted, among other things, that the government of Gustavo Petro seems to believe that everything can be done by the state, that is, the public sector. According to him, allnuncios, trills, decrees and resolutions assign new tasks to public sectorbut they leave the impression of Olympic contempt for private sector.

“It’s a particular way of understanding the role of the state. And it is in the wrong direction: in modern society, collaboration between the public and private sectors is increasingly necessary. Especially since we have a starving public sector and prominent administrative incapacity,” he said.

He noted that recently, in terms of tolls is very illustrative: the prices by 2023; it is announced that the State will compensate the concessionaires; It is not clearly explained how, and there is talk of a “ontana” application of income tax. assessment for this purpose.

According to Restrepo, the consequence is that they were not resubscribed concession contracts new infrastructure, and it is unclear how long it will be before the private sector regains confidence in this mechanism, which has been seriously damaged by the hasty measure of unilateral modification of concession contracts.

“This contempt vis-à-vis the private sector is also reflected in the announcements that have been made on the reform of health and pensions: a lot of statism and very little collaboration with the private sector. We guess something similar in the cascade of announcements and decrees that have recently appeared regarding residential public services, which the 1991 Constitution wanted to offer in a collaborative way between public and private sector companies (article 365) he said, the former finance minister.

For Restrepo, this is therefore the tendency that can be seen in all the messy instrumentals of Public Management that the Petro government introduced. Furthermore, he noted that the Development plan who has just settled Congress of the Republic is the best proof.

“Normally, development plans indicated what percentage of the works to be carried out during the four-year period would benefit from state funding and what percentage would come from private sector-financed investments which, under a policy of collaboration, constitutes a complement of great importance in the works that They will have to be carried out every four years, ”he said.

He argued that it is striking that the plan just presented quantifies only those investments that they have public funding (1,154.8 trillion pesos), while on those that will be financed by the private sector, it is maintained deathly silence.

“In the basics of the development plan that were disclosed a few weeks ago, it was warned that the public sector would invest 1,048.2 billion pesos while the private sector would invest 949.7 billion pesos (in 2022 pesos) . In the final version of the plan that has landed in Congress, not a word is mentioned about what the private sector’s contribution to the development plan will be,” he said.

For him, the impression remains that not only will it be a much lower sum than what the public sector will provide, but also that the editors of the final version of the plan, they were embarrassed to mention explicitly what the contribution of the private sector will be (through concessions, PPPs and many other means than the Constitution and the law provide for involving the private sector in the great task of development).