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The presidential elections on Sunday, June 19, will impact the economy due to the promises of both candidates to make a revolution in the countryside, promote austerity, increase subsidies for the poorest or stop oil exploration.
The electoral contest in Colombia lacks a clear favorite, according to the latest polls, and presents voters with the possibility of choosing between the man who could become the first leftist to be president, Gustavo Petro, or a populist millionaire who promises to end corruption, Rodolfo Hernandez.
Any of them will receive a country with a high fiscal deficit, poverty and unemployment. However, the Administration of Iván Duque will hand over the country’s coffers with economic growth that, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD, is the highest in the region, even above economies such as Chile, Argentina or Brazil. . But this growth is uneven internally.
Duque received the country with unemployment around 9.4% and will hand it over to 12.1%. While the poverty figure, located at 26.9% when he took power, by the end of 2021 it was 39.3%.
The figure indicates that around 19.6 million Colombians live with a monthly income of 350,000 Colombian pesos, about 89 dollars. A situation aggravated by the rise in prices in the South American country.
For May of this year, the annual variation of the Consumer Price Index was 9.07%, one of the highest in Latin America. OECD reports show that food prices increased by 26% in the last year, something that affects low-income households; while the minimum wage only increased by 10%.
Another challenge for Colombia is the fiscal debt, which at the end of 2021 stood at over 70 billion pesos, 7.1% of the Gross Domestic Product, GDP, with a significant jump due to the health crisis.
A Gallup poll showed that 75% of Colombians believe that the country is going in the wrong direction and only 27% approved the management of Iván Duque, who was not eligible for re-election. A 2021 survey by the same firm revealed that 60% of those surveyed had difficulty making ends meet on their income.
The pandemic ended any effort to fight poverty in the country for at least a decade. The truth is that whoever is the winner of this Sunday’s race, the only certain thing is that they promised to make profound changes in the economy that citizens still do not know.
with AP
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