What has happened between the banks and the National Government is an example of how the country should function when efforts are combined for the good of the economy. The President of the Republic started a fight, very much in his style of defiance, with the financial system, through a public policy strategy called forced investments, which is nothing different from forcing banks to lend cheap money to specific sectors. ; It was strictly not the account holders’ money, but of cheap investments in State papers at very attractive rates, money that would return to the system in the form of credits.
In Colombia the idea has been used in the housing sector and in agriculture in the form of Finagro loans. The Ministry of Finance and the Financial Superintendency copied Gustavo Petro’s idea to the letter to execute the forced investment plan, but when it was going to become a ruinous reality, the bankers’ union sat down and worked with the financial authorities, and they turned the initiative into an agreed credit pact where everyone wins and a good dose of money and cordiality is injected.
If everything is ready and begins to be executed with productivity, it is most likely that the injection of cheap money will be felt in the economy in manufacturing, tourism, industry and agriculture, the sectors chosen by the National Government to be reactivated. It is a novel idea that requires agility in the banks and seduction of users of the benefits of cheap money, which are not subsidies, but financing for real projects that transform the national reality, hard hit by the wave of uncertainty and the deterioration of order. public.
Between October 15 and January 15 of the new year, it can have a great effect for the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025, which would change the trend of the economy, that grows little, far below its real potential. But the best thing is the concerted initiative between the private banks and the National Government, which gives a part of victory: In the first month of the Credit Pact, $10.6 billion were disbursed, very focused on the energy transition.
The sectors that have grown the most with the initiative are manufacturing and energy transformation with 33%, compared to the previous year, housing and infrastructure grew 22% and tourism, which grew 26.1%. The Government has geared up to ensure that the pact goes down to the cooperative banks and perhaps to the community action boards; With all this strategy, the increase in GDP can reach 2% at the end of the year and advance to 3.5% in 2025.
It is a good time to fine-tune productive projects and take advantage not only of the pact’s policies, but also of the drop in inflation and lower interest rates. It is a fact that the CPI for the year ending will be below 5.5% and the intervention rate of the Bank of the Republic will be reduced by one digit at the beginning of the year.
It is true that the pact was not born within the banking sector, which was the product of forced investments, but the result is good because the entire situation is adding up so that the reactivation of specific sectors occurs as a consequence of the new economic fundamentals. Optimism is essential for doing any business or setting up a venture, and that feeling is beginning to become widespread, at least in what has to do with the price of money.
