The National Federation of Departments (FND) from Colombia asked the national government to extend the State of Economic, Social and Ecological Emergency and find new revenue to sustain the activity of each department.
The governors requested access to the “resources of games of luck and games of chance”, and specifically the funds from the accumulated prizes of Baloto and other lotteries. This aims at mitigating the drop in state revenues, which are estimated at 20% in each jurisdiction.
The Director of the FND, Carlos Camargo Assis, said that the crisis led to “serious effects on departmental tax revenues and on the governors’ budgets for the coming years,” so they need to find new sources. Through an agreement with President Iván Duque, “the FND proposes the creation of a credit line with resources from the nation’s General Budget.”
The goal is “to renegotiate public credit operations with financial entities, grant exemption periods for taxes payment and give tax incentives, make operating expenses more flexible and extend the Departmental Development Plans.”
In addition, the Colombian lotteries are resuming their operations after the approval of points 3 and 29 of Decree 593, which establishes the businesses that are exempt from mandatory confinement. However, not all lotteries have restarted their operations, and the fact that the quarantine is still in place doesn’t generate a lot of expectations for the economic recovery of the sector.
