National Development model sent to Congress for approval.

Colombia’s government presented a $247.1 billion four-year development plan to the country’s lawmakers, laying out details of its projected social and economic investments with proposals to strengthen Colombia’s economy, combat poverty, improve public security, and combat the negative effects of climate change.

National Development Plan (PND)

The most important objectives:

Agrarian Reform

• A radical land reform would seek to boost domestic food production, lower food prices, and guarantee access to drinking water.
• To achieve this, the agrarian reform will seek stimulus packages for small farmers and farming cooperatives, providing them with the opportunities to legally obtain land rights and facilitate the registry of these land property rights in a central database.
• This strategy would also seek to reduce violence in the countryside where more than half a century of land grabbing by regional elites and organized crime has all but monopolized land ownership, destroyed the agricultural sector, and is fueling the production of cocaine, according to the Truth Commission.

Financial support for the poverty

• The government also wants to strengthen financial support for historically marginalized groups that have disproportionately suffered extreme poverty and hunger.
• Additionally plans to replace the Tax Value Unit with the Relative Value Unit, which allows the government to allow poor citizens to pay less for public services than those who have more money.
• The PND wants to launch a so-called “zero hunger” program, which would allow the government to bypass private financial institutions to provide financial assistance as well as food relief to people whose poverty threatens their food security.

Access to education

• The government plans to provide free higher education.
• The PND additionally would seek to rural populations’ access to the internet and stimulate the development of telecommunications services.

Energy Transition

• Seeks to create a National Registry for the Reduction and Green House Gas Emissions, which would allow stimulus packages for Colombian and multinational companies that develop carbon-neutral energy projects instead of projects that seek to generate energy through the exploitation of traditional energy sources like oil and mining.

Person (2023) Colombia unveils four-year development plan worth nearly $250 bln, Reuters. Thomson Reuters. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/colombia-unveils-four-year-development-plan-worth-nearly-250-bln-2023-02-07/ (Accessed: February 8, 2023).

Colombiareports (2023) Petro reveals strategy to change Colombia’s socio-economic model, Colombia News | Colombia Reports. Available at: https://colombiareports.com/petros-reveals-strategy-to-change-colombias-socio-economic-model/ (Accessed: February 8, 2023).