US Congress approves $471 million budget for Colombia

In the last few hours it became known that the United States Congress approved the Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2022 and that for Colombia a cooperation fund amounting to 471.3 million dollars was allocated.

It was Ambassador Juan Carlos Pinzón who announced the news: “These resources reach issues of social development, rural development, alternative development, but they also strengthen justice, the fight against crime. Resources arrive for Afro-descendant and indigenous populations and, in addition, resources to strengthen our military forces in different capacities, including demining, much of these resources also remain for a subsequent administration in Colombia”

This represents an increase of $10 million over the previous year's budget, and $17.5 million more than requested by the Biden Administration.

In this regard, the president, Iván Duque, pondered the announcement on his twitter account: “With the allocation of the highest budget of the decade for Colombia, by the Government of President Joe Biden, the excellent cooperative relations between our countries are ratified and confirmed that we are the most important ally of the United States in the hemisphere”.

He added that “for this year the amount allocated amounts to USD 471.3 million, USD 10 million more than the 2021 budget; an important contribution that we appreciate and that will be reflected in investments to strengthen the fight against drug trafficking and care for the most vulnerable.”

It was also learned that, after the conciliation process of the text approved in the United States House and Senate, some provisions were left out and submitted by some sectors of the Lower House.

According to information from RCN Radio, the Colombian Embassy said that “provisions that were detrimental to Colombia's security interests and the prestige of the Colombian National Police and Armed Forces were excluded from the final text of the Law.”

This means that in this Law, the funds given to Colombia will be handed over without prohibiting assistance to Esmad. Nor would there be a “negative report on the military retired from Colombia, as a result of what happened with the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse.”

Likewise, the “retention of the International Military Financing account, which depends on annual certification in Human Rights,” will not be increased by 10 per cent, nor will “funds of 30% be withheld in the account of anti-narcotics, subject to annual human rights certification,” said the Embassy statement.

According to information from RCN Radio, the Colombian Embassy in Washington will have met with members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives to get those amendments, some suggested in the Lower House, to ensure that the defense funds for Colombia would be subject to verification of the protection of human rights, following the protests in the country in 2019.

It is worth recalling that last week President Duque, at the end of his meeting with President Joe Biden at the White House, pondered that Colombia has been designated as a strategic ally country of NATO.

“Thank you President @JoeBiden for this important meeting and for the designation of our country as a strategic ally not a member of NATO. Today we take bilateral relations to the highest level, positioning Colombia as the main US partner in Latin America.”

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