Lawmakers reject Colombia government's 2025 budget proposal

By Nelson Bocanegra and Carlos Vargas

BOGOTA (Reuters) -The Colombian Senate's economics committee threw out the government's proposed 2025 budget on Wednesday, arguing the Andean country will not be able to raise the proposed sum amid lower-than-projected tax collection.

At the end of July, Colombia's finance ministry presented a proposed budget to Congress for next year worth 523 trillion pesos ($122 billion).

The budget was rejected even after the finance ministry on Tuesday presented a new fiscal reform proposal to lawmakers to raise some additional 12 trillion pesos ($2.8 billion), which the government says would finance the budget.

But the majority of lawmakers sitting on economic commissions in both the Senate and the lower house, who were weighing the bill jointly on Wednesday, said government efforts to raise more funds, including plans to tackle evasion and avoidance, are not realistic.

"We cannot approve an unfinanced proposal, the product of the irresponsibility of President (Gustavo) Petro," said Senator Carlos Abraham Jimenez, of the right-leaning Radical Change party.

Petro on Tuesday said he would set the budget by decree if Congress rejected it.

"The country needs seriousness, justification and certain sources when it comes to approving budgets with values like the one presented today, if it's not like that we have to reject," said Senate president Efrain Cepada, of the Conservative party. "This isn't personal, it's the minimum demanded in congress."

The Senate's economic commission rejected the budget's value by 12 votes to one, after which a vote by the house committee was not needed.

Last June, the finance ministry was forced to freeze some $4.6 billion in spending because of a drastic fall in tax income, leading to an increase in the fiscal deficit target for 2024 to 5.6%, from a previous 5.3%.

An independent committee which oversees the country's compliance with its so-called fiscal rule - designed to stop public finances deteriorating - in July said that adjustments were needed to ensure compliance in 2024 and 2025, due to possible risks to tax collection.

($1 = 4,285.61 Colombian pesos)

(Reporting by Nelson Bocanegra and Carlos VargasWriting by Oliver Griffin and Julia Symmes CobbEditing by Alistair Bell)