Yesterday the Interunion Committee of Bogotá and Cundinamarca spoke before the announcement by Guillermo Reyes, Minister of Transportation, referring to stopping the various projects in Bogotá if the first line of the Metro is not modified, as proposed by the President of the Republic, Gustavo Petro .
“This Committee makes a respectful call to the National Government to build consensus around the articulated dialogue with the District Government and in this way avoid announcements and warnings that condition the important progress of an ongoing project and the co-financing of new key projects for the mobility of the capital”, says the entity.
He adds that “they have already ruled on the relevance that the contract for the first line of the Bogotá Metro has thanks to the extensive planning process it had, which was validated by three different national Conpes and three multilateral banks (IDB, the WB and the European Investment Bank).
Likewise, the Committee emphasized that it is a priority to guarantee legal certainty to carry out these large infrastructure works that the city has needed for more than 50 years and in front of which there is currently progress and significant investments that cannot be stopped.
Committee Priorities and Bylaws
With the holding of the first Regional Council of the Bogotá-Cundinamarca Metropolitan Region, on December 20, this new entity of territorial associativity began to formally function.
The Interunion Committee of Bogotá and Cundinamarca, of which the Probogotá Region is a part, elected Juan Martín Caicedo, president of the Colombian Chamber of Infrastructure (CCI), as its delegate. Caicedo will contribute to the construction of a simple, efficient and proactive figure of associativity, according to the entity.
The Regional Council must define the metropolitan facts, which are those economic, social, technological, physical, cultural, territorial, political or administrative phenomena that simultaneously affect or impact two or more of the municipalities that make up the Metropolitan Region, to work in them primarily.
It was agreed to give priority to the issues of mobility and food supply. Similarly, the Board approved the statutes and structure of the entity.
The Bogotá-Cundinamarca Metropolitan Region is made up of the Capital District, the Cundinamarca Governor’s Office and the municipalities of Cundinamarca that are associated, in accordance with article 325 of the National Constitution, modified by Legislative Act 020 of 2020. The domicile and main headquarters of the Bogotá – Cundinamarca Metropolitan Region will be the city of Bogotá DC by decision of the Regional Council.
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Guidelines
In this sense, the association of municipalities contemplates the following guidelines:
- List of eligible municipalities, according to the analysis of territorial, environmental, social or economic dynamics and the metropolitan facts.
- It will be updated every three years or when decided by the Regional Council.
- Formalization of the entry of the municipalities: with formal request of the mayor and with Municipal Agreement that authorizes incorporation.
- Adoption through Regional Agreement with metropolitan facts identified by which the municipality enters.
- Notification to the municipal mayor by the Technical Secretariat of the Regional Council.
For its part, the withdrawal of municipalities must take into account the following guidelines:
- Formal request from the mayor together with the Municipal Agreement in which the respective decision is adopted.
- Prerequisites: certification stating that the municipality is up to date and report that it does not affect the Strategic and Metropolitan Planning Plan.
- Acceptance of withdrawal through Regional Agreement that indicates the date from which it will be effective.
The president and vice president will be elected from among the associated territorial entities for a period of one year. Likewise, ordinary sessions, at least once every two months, will be called five business days in advance, and extraordinary ones that will be called one day before.