Seinforma Canada

The reduction of money transfer from the central government to the provinces (2002-2006) made some of the territorial funding problems even worst, and affected the coverage in education in more than 800 municipalities. In 2006, from 11,925,488 children and young people between 5-17 years old that should had been matriculated in elementary and high school, 2,698,738 of them never entered into a educational institution. For 2005, it had caused a loss of coverage for 2,929,030 kids. Thus, in the same period of time, it caused the loss of 1,679,000 educational seats for poor families, and there were 44,000 fewer teachers in 2006 than in 2001.

By Johanna Elizabeth Manrique/Seinforma Canada Correspondent

Bogota, Colombia.- After 100 years of political and economic centralism, in 1986, Colombia initiates a process of reverse of concentration, delegation and transfer of responsibilities, functions, resources, expenses, institutions and autonomy to sub national territorial levels; within the framework of a deeper transformation to clear the central expenditure to turn it effective; together with decentralization and neoliberal instruments; in attempt to a better resource distribution; within the scope of education, trying to reach coverage and quality mainly.

The future of Colombia is bleeding
The reduction in transfers between 2002 and 2006 made some of the territorial funding problems even worst, and of course affected the coverage problems in education in more than 800 municipalities, that lacked taxable instruments. According to Professor Oscar Rodríguez Salazar, in 2006, from 11,925,488 children and young people between 5 and 17 years old that should had been matriculated in elementary and high school, 2,698,738 of them never entered the educational institution. According to the General Comptroller of the Republic office, for 2005, the 2001 reform had caused a loss of coverage for 2,929,030 kids. Thus, between 2002 and 2006 caused the loss of 1,679,000 educational seats for poor families, a sacrifice of 22.6% to 24% in relation to the Constitutional Letter.
There were 44,000 fewer teachers in 2006 than in 2001, the assignment that the Nation sends for every student has maintained the same value through the entire period or it has been reduced, affecting the assignment of resources for every attended student, cutting the workers rights of teachers and stimulating the privatization. The Educational Center for Research and Investigation (CEID for its acronym in Spanish) indicates that in the year 2000, there were 350,000 teachers dedicated to 8,500,000 students, and for 2006 there were 306,000 dedicated to 9,226,750 students, reflecting a worsening in the student-teacher relation and overcrowding conditions.
With the agreement 001 of 2001, the education and health expenses were reduced from a 49% of National budget in 2001 to a 35% in 2006, period in which 4,000 educational institutions were closed and 2.8 million kids were incorporated to the working world, according to UNICEF. This lack of funding affected the territorial structure of the educational institutions, where the 18% of them have no classrooms or they are half destroyed, the 33.6% are in bad conditions and the 66.6% do not have labs, didactic, or technological resources. Despite the fact that the investment in quality of education has been increasing, the numbers are derisory for a country that needs a lot to get to the frontiers of development the quality investment in Colombia in 2003 was $1,753 per student and in 2004 was $2,405.
In rural zones there has been found a regressive trend in vocational middle education, due to the high level of desertion and the lack of physical and human resources; many institutions have been dissolved or merged, mainly from technical education such as INEM, CASD and CEDIT. The areas with the reform will stop receiving 49 trillion pesos. The Decennial Plan, main part of the social policy in education of the current government, only took place in 50% of the departments and it only took into account the 30% of the municipalities. With the cutting in transfers, the Educational Decennial Plan is submerged.(See graph 3)

S.O.S. We are sinking!

“My first impression, when I realized that I was submerged in darkness, that I couldn’t see the back of my hand, was feeling that I was not going to be able to control the fear. I could hear the noise of the water against the raft, I knew it was still moving, but it was unreachable (…) with the same hope that I had that afternoon while I was waiting for airplanes in the horizon, I waited late at night for ship lights (…) The raft was still moving forward, I was not able to calculate how far I had moved during the night, but everything looked the same in the horizon, like I hadn’t moved an inch”. Gabriel García Márquez, Relato de un Náufrago (1970)

In Colombia, the far off coast is the border where it needs to arrive to build better growth and development bases. The raft is the education, because it is a way to get to that goal. The resources (the ones it has and the ones arriving (transfers)), help the shipwrecked to be alive to accomplish his goals; the State is the shipwrecked that has no compass: a long term growth and development project, and with the education added to it.
When will we be able to emerge from the underdevelopment if the base where the shipwrecked should be sailing is sinking? The problem with the Colombian State, and of a lot of countries called developing countries, is that there is no compass. The North should not only be covering the population with horizontal education, meaning covering the population with elementary and high school, but it should also be a leading venture, vertical specialized education, directed to an specified activity that generates more added value within the world commerce; following the example of the Asian Tigers where a policy like that was implemented with successful results.

^{1 Restrepo, Dario y Cárdenas, Raúl (2001) descentralización, desarrollo e integración. Crisis del centralismo y nuevos retos para entidades territoriales.} ^{p. 122} ^{2 Documento del Departamento nacional de Planeación (1994)

3 Op Cit} ^{Restrepo, Dario y Cárdenas, Raúl (2001)

4 Debate de 17 de Mayo de 2007, ante el Senado

5 Oscar Rodríguez Salazar foro convocado por el Polo Democrático alternativo el 17 de mayo

6 García Márquez, Gabriel. “Relato de un Náufrago”. P. 18-20}

   And that is how in 1986 a system of transfers is established in order to assign 50% VAT to the territorial subdivisions. The Political Constitution of 1991 replaces VAT for a 46% transfer of the National Current Income (ICN for its acronym in Spanish), made up of taxable and nontaxable resources, such as taxes, rates, etc. It has been established since then, a sectorial decentralization where the different national levels are distributing competences for handling these sectors.
   The municipalities counted on the 60% of the tax collection for education, and a part of an additional 20% directed to the health system or education as required. From the National Current Income, the 80% had a specific destination, from which the 30% was exclusively for education investment expenses and another 20% to be used in this and other areas such as health and basic cleaning, among others.1
   Despite the goodness of the system, the decentralization was an actual mechanism to extend the State wing to attend more directly the needs of the people, four aspects that controlled the decentralized budget, and at the sane time forced it to be more efficient were: the specifically designated expenses, the subordination of transfers to the achievement of performances, resources competences and smaller transfers at cost price of the covering area.
   The expenses of specific destination introduced serious restrictions for territorial finances, because it has a high percentage within the decentralized resources, 81.5% in 1996, which means that with that proportion the transferred amounts had to go for investment expenses and the remains, not enough for most of the small municipalities, for functional expenses, creating an important paradox: installations and a wider coverage, with a reduced teaching staff that it could hardly be afforded (in case of the smallest municipalities).
   This outlook, along with the problems to cover the social services expenses, made the local body look for funding mechanisms, through a tax increase to create their own incomes, transferring part of the administrative system to the private sector companies, and in the nineties to look for funding through the credit; with this situation it became clear that at a decentralized level it could be reach a great level of inefficiency for handling the public expenses.

From joyful time to the painful one
   That is why, during the presidential period of Andrés Pastrana (1998 - 2002) and in the middle of the biggest economical crisis that Colombia had suffered in the last decades, it came up the necessity of clearing the local treasury and reducing the fiscal deficit. The Law 60 and the articles 356 and 357, that defined the transfer system, were modified through the agreement called Legislative Act 001 of 2001, which integrates the municipal shares of the National Current Income, the tax collection (for districts and departments) and resources from the Educational Compensation Fund (FEC for its acronym in Spanish), in the General Share System (SGP for its acronym in Spanish).
   This legislative act, required a transition period, when the amounts and the percentages to be transferred were defined, and that is how: from 2002 to 2005, IPC+ 2 % per year, from 2006 to 2008, IPC+ 2.5% per year; and from 2009 and on an average of the last 4 years. According to the General Comptroller of the Republic office, this meant a loss for the departments, districts and municipalities, between 2002 and 2006, of 7.1 trillion pesos, about a 9%; 28 trillion pesos (in real terms in 2005), because the Legislative Act 001 of 2001 cut the National Current Income (ICN) shares off.
   It was settled according to the Law 715, that the resources from SGP would be distributed this way: 58.5% to the educational system, 24.5% to the health system and 17% for general purposes from which 4% is for the School supplies program and the National Pension Funds for Territorial Subdivisions. However, the distribution was not based on the NBI method (Unsatisfied Basic Needs); it was based on the number of inhabitants in each municipality, what led to a deeper territorial inequality: the smaller municipalities are being punished, and of course those are the ones less able of generating their own incomes.
   Under the National Development Plan done in Álvaro Uribe Velez’s government, the possibility of not keeping the 001 agreement of 2001 is contemplated, according to which in 2009 the budget items transferred to the municipalities should have at least the amount of 2001. And that is how the decrease in transferred resources as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is continued, and yet it is pretend to reach better coverage numbers through partial subsidies and specific assistance to projects given by the communal councils^§. Those have been 156 and there are 1100 municipalities, we would need several years to assist them all; something that buries the concept of universality. However, the increase in the military expenses through the democratic security policy has increase 203%.
   The projections in education, according to National Planning, establishes that towards 2010 the universal coverage would be accomplished through this scheme, but studies from the Development Research Center (CID for its acronym in Spanish) adduce that this goal would have to wait until 2019 to be accomplished. The Legislative Act 011 configures the transition of drafts and transfers thus: in 2008 and 2009, IPC + 4% + 1.3 (additional for education), in 2010, IPC + 3.5 + 1.6 (additional for education), and in 2011 and 2016, IPC + 3% + 1.8 (additional for education). Starting on 2016 the transfers for the departments and municipalities will increase on an average of the increase of the National Current Income of the last four years. According to the figures of the National Planning Department, the intergovernmental drafts without the reform, would reach in 2009 more than 24 trillion pesos and with the reform 20 trillion pesos; this would not cover the population in health nor education. In real terms of 2005, according to the CID and numbers presented by Professor Darío Restrepo, the amount of transfers would decrease in 52 trillion pesos towards 2019. (See graphs 1 and 2)