IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/col/000094/002140.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

COLOMBIA'S PUBLIC FINANCE IN THE 1990s: A DECADE OF REFORMS, FISCAL IMBALANCE, AND DEBT

Author

Listed:
  • Luis Ignacio Lozano E.

Abstract

At the beginning of the nineties, a diversity of economic reforms were designed and implemented to reduce the size of the country's public sector with the objective of making it more efficient. Despite the reforms, ten years later, the Colombian public sector is 80% larger, and the financial sustainability of the Government presents serious problems. In 1999, Colombia's chief indicator of economic growth (GDP) was –4,3% and the unemployment rate reached 20%. Such an evident dwindling of the economic activity has been accompanied with imbalances in the macroeconomic accounts, particularly in the public sector. This paper provides a general description of Colombia's economic trends in the last few years, closely examining the factors which have undermined the country's public finances. Section II contains an overview of the fiscal imbalances registered as of the 1960s, and their relationship with both the real business cycle and the tax policy. Section III includes a synthesis of the main economic reforms introduced in the early nineties, and compares the size of the Colombian public sector with those of several neighboring countries. Section IV describes the key issues involved in the country's recent fiscal imbalance and, Section V, analyses the dynamics of the public debt and the question of its sustainability. The closing section outlines the policies for economic adjustment and reactivation currently debated in Colombia.

Suggested Citation

  • Luis Ignacio Lozano E., 2001. "COLOMBIA'S PUBLIC FINANCE IN THE 1990s: A DECADE OF REFORMS, FISCAL IMBALANCE, AND DEBT," Borradores de Economia 2140, Banco de la Republica.
  • Handle: RePEc:col:000094:002140
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.banrep.gov.co/docum/ftp/borra174.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fischer, Stanley & Easterly, William, 1990. "The Economic of the Government Budget Constraint," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 5(2), pages 127-142, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Barón-Rivera, Juan David & Meisel-Roca, Adolfo, 2004. "La descentralización y las disparidades económicas regionales en Colombia en la década de 1990," Chapters, in: Meisel-Roca, Adolfo (ed.), Macroeconomía y regiones en Colombia, chapter 4, pages 152-217, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    2. Joaquín Mauricio Zuleta Arango & Lisandro López Marín & Daniel Sánchez García, 2010. "Descentralización Y Disparidades Económicas Territoriales En Colombia (1990-2005)," Observatorio de la Economía Latinoamericana, Servicios Académicos Intercontinentales SL. Hasta 31/12/2022, issue 130, April.
    3. Ignacio Lozano, 2009. "Budget Deficit, Money Growth and Inflation: Evidence from the Colombian case," Money Affairs, CEMLA, vol. 0(1), pages 65-95, January-J.
    4. Joaquín Viloria De La Hoz, 2001. "Descentralización en el Caribe colombiano: las finanzas departamentales en los noventas," Documentos de Trabajo Sobre Economía Regional y Urbana 2283, Banco de la República, Economía Regional.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ibrahim Ari & Muammer Koc, 2018. "Sustainable Financing for Sustainable Development: Understanding the Interrelations between Public Investment and Sovereign Debt," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-25, October.
    2. Jacob Engwerda & Davoud Mahmoudinia & Rahim Dalali Isfahani, 2016. "Government and Central Bank Interaction under Uncertainty: A Differential Games Approach," Iranian Economic Review (IER), Faculty of Economics,University of Tehran.Tehran,Iran, vol. 20(2), pages 225-259, Spring.
    3. Murshed, Muntasir & Nijhum, Nawrin Khan, 2019. "The Fiscal and Current Account Imbalances: An Empirical analysis of the Twin Deficits Hypothesis in Bangladesh," MPRA Paper 97115, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. J. Paul Dunne a,† & Sam Perlo-Freeman ‡ & Aylin Soydan §, 2004. "Military expenditure and debt in South America," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(2), pages 173-187, April.
    5. Akhand Akhtar Hossain, 2009. "Central Banking and Monetary Policy in the Asia-Pacific," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 12777.
    6. J. Paul Dunne † & Sam Perlo-Freeman ‡ & Aylin Soydan §, 2004. "Military expenditure and debt in small industrialised economies: A panel analysis," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(2), pages 125-132, April.
    7. Easterly, william, 2001. "Growth implosions, debt explosions, and my Aunt Marilyn : do growth slowdowns cause public debt crises?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2531, The World Bank.
    8. Ifeanyi Onwuka, 2022. "Budget Deficit, Inflation and Economic Growth in Nigeria: An Empirical Analysis," International Journal of Economics and Financial Research, Academic Research Publishing Group, vol. 8(1), pages 1-14, 03-2022.
    9. Krzysztof Zalewski, 2009. "Forecasting Turning Points with Composite Leading Indicators - the Case of Poland," Ekonomia journal, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw, vol. 24.
    10. Talknice Saungweme & Nicholas M. Odhiambo, 2019. "Does Public Debt Impact Economic Growth in Zambia? An Ardl-Bounds Testing Approach," SPOUDAI Journal of Economics and Business, SPOUDAI Journal of Economics and Business, University of Piraeus, vol. 69(4), pages 53-73, October-D.
    11. Halebić Jasmin & Moćević Amina, 2020. "Analysis of Public Debt at Subnational Government Levels: Evidence from Cantons in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina," South East European Journal of Economics and Business, Sciendo, vol. 15(2), pages 109-123, December.
    12. FA Al‐Marhubi, 2000. "Income inequality and inflation: the cross‐country evidence," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 18(4), pages 428-439, October.
    13. Agbonyitor, Albert D. K., 1998. "Development expenditures and the local financing constraint," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1907, The World Bank.
    14. Piotr Ciżkowicz & Andrzej Rzońca, 2011. "Mechanizmy oddziaływania deficytu fiskalnego na wzrost gospodarki," Gospodarka Narodowa. The Polish Journal of Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, issue 10, pages 1-20.
    15. Hong-Ghi Min, 2002. "Inequality, the price of nontradables, and the real exchange rate : theory and cross-country evidence," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2758, The World Bank.
    16. Piotr Ciżkowicz & Andrzej Rzońca, 2014. "Interest Rates Close to Zero, Post-crisis Restructuring and Natural Interest Rate," Prague Economic Papers, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2014(3), pages 315-329.
    17. Israel Fainboim & Mauricio Olivera & Julio César Alonso, 1997. "La sostenibilidad de la política fiscal colombiana," Coyuntura Económica, Fedesarrollo, September.
    18. Helder Ferreira de Mendonça & Ytallo Brito, 2021. "The link between public debt and investment: an empirical assessment from emerging markets," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(50), pages 5864-5876, October.
    19. Sarmiento, Julio & Cayon, Edgardo & Collazos, María & Sandoval, Juan S., 2017. "Positive asymmetric information in volatile environments: The black market dollar and sovereign bond yields in Venezuela," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 547-555.
    20. Velázquez, Efraín J., 1990. "El déficit cuasi-fiscal en Venezuela: 1980-1989," Sede de la CEPAL en Santiago (Estudios e Investigaciones) 33550, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:col:000094:002140. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Clorith Angelica Bahos Olivera (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.