The reform agenda that the Government has proposed is at the top with health, work and pension, and hopes that Congress will approve them this year. But there is more; at least that’s what the minister of Education, Alejandro Gaviria, regarding the General Participation System (SGP), that is, the resources that the Nation turns to the territorial entities to finance this service, hospitals as well as drinking water and basic sanitation. It is worth remembering that it is an initiative that was seen as necessary in the Duque and Santos administrations to improve resources for the regions, but in the end no progress was made on this purpose.
The Government has set ambitious goals in education, such as in the university with 500,000 new students in this four-year period. PFor this purpose, the consolidation of the free policy, the regionalization of the offer of public universities, infrastructure and the reform of Icetex are proposed.
It also proposes the dignification of teaching work and a curricular reform. Minister Gaviria said that “all this is going to require a legal reform of the General Participation System, which defines the total amount of education, which we will take to Congress in the second half of this year.”
Gaviria had already spoken about the issue in September of last year, when he said that “we are going to have a table where we have representation from the territorial entities, Fecode and other actors in the sector, to discuss the necessary reform to the SGP; and another table to begin to discuss, or to have a convergence with the student movement, with the Congress and with the interested parties for our reform to Law 30 of the year 92″.
Previous governments
In 2016, the government of Juan Manuel Santos agreed with governors and mayors on the need to reform the SGP. However, he presented this constitutional reform to Congress less than a month before he finished his second term on August 7, 2018.
However, in October 2018, the new government of Iván Duque withdrew the project presented by Santos, since the discussion of the General Budget of the Nation for the year 2019 was in parallel, which contemplated additional resources for education in the order of $587 billion.
The then President Duque, in the presentation of the National Development Plan 2018-2022, expressed the need to transform the System for “a greater allocation of resources as well as a systematic improvement in the allocation criteria and transfer distribution formula.”
However, that project that Duque Márquez announced never reached Congress. Yes, parliamentary initiatives were presented in all these years to make adjustments to the provisions of article 356 of the Political Constitution, but they did not go ahead in the process because they did not have the majority support of the benches.
CWith the money provided in the SGP from the central government, the mayors and governors finance projects that improve the provision of health, education and public services of drinking water and basic sanitation.
The executive director of the Colombian Federation of Municipalities, Gilberto Toro, has indicated to THE NEW CENTURY that “we consider that the project should be processed as soon as possible because the municipalities have advanced in important coverage, in education, in health, in public services and in all the powers established by Law 715 of 2001.”
He added that “participation must be understood and regulated based on the potential and development capacities of the different municipalities. It is worth clarifying that not all municipalities in the country are the same.”
On the other hand, the executive director of the National Federation of Departments, Didier Tavera, told this newspaper that the reform of the SGP “has been one of the priorities to achieve true decentralization and autonomy, since it is this System that sustains and it maintains the transfers for the fulfillment of the obligations and powers of the departments and municipalities, and to settle the historical debt after 30 years of the 1991 Constitution”.