We would be talking about a reduction in the nation’s budget for Risaralda of 30% for the previous year.
The Pereira ProRisaralda Improvement Society, through its Territorial Development Laboratory, delivered the consolidated summary of how the execution of the regionalized budget of Risaralda was carried out during the year 2023, based on the delivery that the Department National Planning Department (DNP) carried out.
Execution of the nation’s investment budget in the department of Risaralda for the years 2019 to 2023. Source: Territorial Development Laboratory – Pereira ProRisaralda Improvement Society.
According to the entity, an investment in Risaralda was evidenced that reached a total of $794.4 billion pesos, considering both budgetary commitments (formalized contracts) and payment obligations (accounts payable already authorized). This figure represents an execution level of 96% under the first criterion and 56% under the second.
It should be clarified that the budget provisions, as well as the disbursement of money, are carried out by the DNP and not by the governorships and mayors: “The budget execution percentages mentioned are obtained by comparing the execution with the budget finally assigned to the department, which according to The DNP for December reached $827,341 million pesos, a value that is 9.4% lower than the budget initially assigned to the department, which was $913,180 million pesos, that is, during the budget modification processes carried out throughout the year. , the investment budget assigned to Risaralda was significantly reduced,” the report indicated.
In this way, the Territorial Development Laboratory discovered that the amount committed in 2023 was 30% lower than that committed in 2022 and 5.3% lower than that committed in 2021, “which shows that during the current government there has been reduced the nation’s investment in Risaralda. In addition to the above, the large gap between the committed (contracted) budget and the obligations (amount collected by contractors and approved for payment) is worrying, which is $333 billion pesos, 28% of the entire committed budget. which indicates that in addition to the reduction in the budget, there is a low level of execution of the contracts and investment projects that were contracted and their budget committed during 2023,” was evidenced in the report.
“In addition, there are two elements that draw attention, when we see where those resources of $333 billion were that were committed and are not in payment obligations, the two largest items are: the resource that there was for $200 billion for the Hospital Fourth Level Regional that the budget commitments from last year were there, but they were not executed and there is an amount of a little more than $51 billion pesos that corresponds to the housing subsidies that the Government almost did not execute last year. the delivery of housing subsidies,” said Óscar Jiménez, economic analyst at the Territorial Development Laboratory.
Among the investments designated by the General Budget of the Nation in 2023 for Risaralda, $56 billion in education stands out, which was reflected in the construction of educational institutions, as well as the School Feeding Program (PAE).