EL ESPECTADOR, December 31, 2024
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, CNN Volunteer Translator)
From the Pescaito neighborhood in Santa Marta, the President spoke to the nation in his last speech of the year. He talked about the challenges his administration had faced this year, and the promises he hopes to accomplish in 2025.
President Gustavo Petro chose Santa Marta to close out his official schedule for 2024. In his speech, he focused on highlighting what he considered to be his administration’s most important achievements in the last 12 months. “We’re concluding a year that challenged us as a project, but it’s a year we have closed off with a great deal of hope, and more and more convinced that this is the way to build a Colombia that is just and at peace,” he said this Tuesday, December 31at 7:00 p.m.
The President said that he had chosen 11 improvements “among many others” to tell the country how he is carrying out his promise of change. Several of his points were related to the economy, like the first one, where he underscored how his administration had lifted 2.5 million people out of hunger in 2023 and is hoping that official figures for 2024 will be even greater.
In second place, he spoke of economic results which, according to DANE (National Administrative Department of Statistics), grew 2.9%; of inflation, which fell from 13% to 5%; and unemployment, which was also reduced, now at 8.2%. “Have they been telling you that we were doing poorly? That the whole world was going to cast us aside because of our progressive administration? I have to say that they were lying to you; it’s totally to the contrary. Colombia is the example of betting that we’ll be able to build a country that’s not based on greed, on the mafia, on fossil fuels that contaminate, or on conflict, on weapons of war. We are building a country based on its beauty, its diversity, its culture, and its nature. A country that’s beautiful,” added Petro.
For his next subject, the President highlighted the statistics on the distribution of land, and he said the figure was 13 times the amount of land distributed by the Iván Duque administration. He mentioned his pension reform which will take effect in the middle of 2025, and the 2.8 million “old people” who will be benefited by the new system approved by Congress, but which right now is being considered by the Constitutional Court.
We were able to reach an agreement with the financial sector to bring 55 billón pesos (roughly USD $12,422,421,000 at current exchange rates) in credit to the workers and those who have been excluded from the financial system for decades. According to data we have, this effort that we have called the Credit Pact has increased expenditures by 27% in sectors like agriculture, manufacturing, and the people’s economy, he made clear in the 5th point in his speech.
In the same manner, he talked about the COP16 meeting in Cali, and he stressed that it was “the most important event in the history of Colombia”. And then he jumped to the next subject and lauded the tourism numbers, one of his big efforts from his campaign in 2022. According to official data, this year there were more than six million foreign visitors, which makes Colombia the country with the third highest number of tourists in the region, behind Mexico and the Dominican Republic.
For his 8th point, he celebrated the passage of his constitutional reform bill which changes the General System of Participation (SCP in Spanish) to provide more resources and more obligations to the regions. It should be noted that this effort, led by the Interior Minister, Juan Fernando Cristo, depends on a jurisdiction statute that will have to be under consideration for a good part of 2025.
Moreover, Petro insisted that his administration has seized 848 tons of cocaine, which would be an increase of 14% compared to 2023, and of 29% compared to 2022. On this point, he reminded us that there has been a shift in drug policy wherein he is seeking to prosecute the profiteering drug lords and not the campesinos growing coca.
Finally, for point 10, he identified the 9.5% increase in the minimum wage, very much criticized by political and economic sectors, and, on point 11, the 1.6% reduction in homicide statistics. That is in spite of the fact that the opposition is complaining that security is one of the most serious problems facing the Petro administration.
“My desire for the coming year is that these statistics and this good progress will unite us as Colombians, and that we will reach a consensus, so that ideas that favor the public will finally be the ones we agree on. In 2025, my administration’s commitment will be to make every one of these promises a reality,” the President concluded in his end-of-year message.