President Petro takes on the Bank of the Republic over the weekend

President Gustavo Petro spoke out against the Bank of the Republic twice over the weekend. Initially, he criticized the central bank's request to postpone the pension reform. Later, he expressed his displeasure at the bank's continued failure to lower interest rates.

In response to this latest development, President Gustavo Petro responded to a message from CUT leader Fabio Arias, opposing the Bank of the Republic's tendency to maintain the interest rate at 9.25 and its request to postpone the pension reform's implementation.

President Petro followed the union leader's lead and went against the Bank of the Republic. According to the president, the Bank of the Republic is acting out of alleged political motivation.

"The board of directors of the Bank of the Republic, driven by ideology and prejudice—class hatred, you might say—is leading the Colombian economy toward financial vampirism, when, on the contrary, I proposed boosting real production," the Colombian president asserted.

Petro's reason for this comment is that maintaining the interest rate supposedly means resources are spent on paying off debt. "There's an almost accounting formula in economics regarding debt and its maintenance: If the real interest rate is higher than the real growth of the economy, the debt becomes unsustainable; it increasingly sucks more of national production to stop it."

According to Petro, "the banks are becoming the vampires of the economy, and we all pay taxes to the financial system, which was created to boost production, not crush it."

The President noted that there should be a response from large companies, but this hasn't happened. "It's up to the small and medium-sized businesses associated with cooperatives to move forward and lead the Colombian economy, alongside the working people."

The president's criticism of the issuing body began at the beginning of the weekend, when it was revealed that the Central Bank of the Republic had requested that the entry into force of the pension reform be postponed so it could begin the necessary hiring. "It's definitive: we are facing a new maneuver to prevent the pension reform. Never seen before," he said in a tweet.

In another message, he was more forceful in clarifying that his statement was not against the Constitutional Court but rather against the request of the sender. "What I do see are attempts from various quarters to hinder the implementation of the reform," he stated.

Juan Sebastian Lombo Delgado