This Monday, October 9, in the plenary session of the House of Representatives, the speaker on health reform, the congressman of the Green Alliance, Martha Alfonso Jurado, confessed that the controversial project does not have the fiscal and financial endorsement of the Ministry of the Treasury . “We believe it is unnecessary,” he argued.
In addition, the congressman of the Democratic Center, Andrés Forero, asked the Chamber secretary if the said document came to financially support the controversial project and the answer was “no.”
Restrepo believes that speaker Martha Alfonso was “very wrong” when she assured that financial and financial guarantees were not required. “And even more so when it comes to initiatives such as health reform and other reforms that may mean more public spending in the future. These initiatives must fit within the country’s financial frameworks. This is one thing which is elementary, Congress will not agree to process laws that could have serious public financial consequences with closed eyes.
The former minister said that this does not disqualify the reforms, “but it requires a minimum fiscal control.”
What will happen if Congress continues to progress the study and approval of health reform and there is no financial guarantee from the Ministry of Finance? SEMANA asked.
For his part, the former Minister of Finance, Rudolf Hommes, agreed to SEMANA that the health reform must have an endorsement or opinion from the Ministry of Finance. “This project cannot come out without that, it cannot be approved without knowing what the Minister of Finance thinks,” he said.
Hommes also went to the law and cited Article 7 of the Fiscal Impact Analysis of the Standards.
“It says that it can be done at any time in the process, but it should be taken into account in the explanatory statement that was before the vote. The logical thing is that they presented themselves earlier. The presentation this is ultimately useless,” the former minister summed up.
The former Minister of Finance, José Manuel Restrepo, also expressed his opinion along the same lines.
“Frankly, I don’t understand how you can say it doesn’t require financial viability,” he said. “As mentioned from the beginning, the reform has additional financial costs, which even in the first stage the Ministry of Finance estimates 113 billion additional pesos in ten years.”
“Not doing so, apart from financial imprudence, puts the project at risk from a legal point of view in its processing and will certainly not pass the analysis carried out by the Constitutional Court,” he said.
He said that this concept was not issued at the time from his office “because it is necessary to know what the final elements of the reform are to estimate the costs,” and added that it may happen later .
Ocampo emphasized that “without endorsement, the reform is not in accordance with the constitution, but I don’t think it should happen now.” However, it must be delivered before the study is completed by Congress, he said.
On the contrary, Rudolf Hommes believes that due to the size of the project, the financial and financial guarantee should be known soon.
“I do not believe, then, that they will give it to a finished reform, before proceeding with a vote there must be a report, which will repeat the health system and the financial part is the key. “We need to know what the outcome of all this craziness is,” he said.
Why does the Minister of Finance, Ricardo Bonilla, not give fiscal endorsement for health reform? Could he have doubts about the project, as happened to the former Minister José Antonio Ocampo?, asked the opponents of the Government.
