BOGOTÁ — President Abelardo de la Espriella marked his first 36 days in office with a televised address to the nation on Sunday, September 13, laying out nine central points covering Colombia’s fiscal crisis, his security offensive, relations with the United States, and earthquake recovery — a speech that doubled as both a governing report card and an unusually direct set of warnings aimed at his political predecessors.
The Fiscal Crisis
De la Espriella opened by confirming what his own economic team had already flagged earlier in the month: Colombia’s fiscal deficit stands at 7.8% of GDP, with projections showing it could widen to 9.4% as the country’s borrowing capacity nears exhaustion.
The president was explicit about attributing responsibility for that gap to the outgoing Petro administration, saying that in his very first week in office, “Petrismo committed 10 trillion pesos” in spending he characterized as “a massive theft from the public treasury.”
De la Espriella vowed direct consequences:
“I will not leave you in peace, I am coming for every one of you.”
To address the deficit, his government has structured an austerity plan totaling 17.4 trillion pesos in cuts, including nearly 13 trillion in reduced transfers, 3 trillion in cuts to goods and services purchases, and 2.5 trillion in reductions to non-priority investment projects.