The Colombian Subventions Policies to their Most Vulnerable in the Next Months.
The health expenditures of the Latin American countries are much lower than those of Europe, which is a reflection of the lower social economic development. In effect, according to the World Health Organization and International Information Agencies, these expenses in relation to GDP are led in Latin America by Cuba (10.6%) and Uruguay (6.4%), then in the middle of the table are Colombia (4.1%) and Brazil (3.8%) and in the last places Venezuela and Haiti with 1.5% and 0.7% respectively. Countries that most are below the economies of Europe such as 7.9% of the United Kingdom, 8% of Spain and almost 10% of France and Germany.
In fact, with a spending on health per capita of US 1.076 per year, in 2.017 Latin America spent three times less on health than the countries of the European Union, which on average spend US $ 3.364 per head.
Colombia with US1.039 per capita surpasses countries such as Venezuela, Haiti, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Bolivia and Peru and is lower than Cuba, Chile, Uruguay and Argentina.
In universal health coverage, Cuba (83%), Uruguay (80%) and Brazil (79%) stand out. Colombia registers 76% like Mexico and below are countries like Chile, Paraguay, Venezuela and last Haiti with 49%. It should be noted that although in Latin America there are numerous health systems whose declared objective is universal coverage, in practice numerous barriers persist. A particularly important one is the direct payment made to access services not included in the coverage plans.
Cuba and Argentina stand out in hospital beds for every 10.000 inhabitants, with 52 and 50 respectively. Away are Chile and Brazil with 22, Colombia with 15 and in the last places Guatemala and Haiti with 7. In this Colombia, it has half the beds of Italy and Spain and the same number as Iran.
The Colombian authorities issued Economic Emergency decrees establishing a series of measures aimed at expanding health services and financially contributing to the most vulnerable population in their monetary income. Before, other decrees had been enacted to financially promote companies, especially those most affected by this crisis and to grant benefits such as anticipating the return of the VAT( IVA in spanish language) to the most vulnerable. The Banco de la República, for its part, established the expansion of liquidity through open market operations and exchange hedging.
The authorities considered it necessary to issue more measures as mentioned above, to support the most vulnerable sector of the population over the next two months, due to the quarantine necessary for all Colombians in view of the advance of the Coronavirus pandemic.
According to official information sources, it is a matter of a contagion rate of over 2 in the country and that in a few months there will be approximately three million lightly ill patients and about 550,000 of severe affectation. Therefore, the country needs to increase the supply of intensive care units and care in beds. The country has approximately 60.000 beds in intensive care units.
In Colombia, according to experts in the health sector, projections for those infected indicate that in number they will reach those reached by some countries in Europe within two months and will continue to grow until reaching the highest peak in june or july. , from where they will begin to decrease, taking a time span of between one and two months to reach zero infection. Containment measures and quarantine will prevent contagion from being greater or reduced. The number of deaths can reach 600 in the two months and continue to rise until the middle of the year.
The time it takes for the complete cycle of the virus to close the contagion, according to experts, covers 5 or 6 months from march, which implies that the quarantine period (until april 13) will have to be prolonged by the authorities and that there will be greater money supports to the Families in Action, Youth in Action and Senior Citizen programs that were offered for april (anticipating the month of may) and will have to be extended until june or july and also the Sisbén programs in health.
Public services for the most vulnerable, which will be subsidized by municipalities or departments, will also have to be expanded for yet more months. Students from public, private and university schools will have to decide on the stagnation of their periods of activity or continue with virtual classes. Infrastructure works such as the metro line, Regiotram, large expansions of the entrances of Bogota and in general works throughout the country, particularly those of large cities, should be submitted to study and possibly rethink them over time, to avoid crowds of operators on the job sites.
As for health services, they will still have to be expanded to attend to the growing number of infected people, beds with the participation of hotels by agreements with the State and the importation of machines such as respirators and items for ICUs. All of which with both private and public resources, the latter with national indebtedness, either with loans from entities such as the CAF or the IDB or in the short term with new TES issues, a mechanism that has been in use since the previous year.
It will be necessary to temporarily get out of the fiscal rule to attend subsidies and supports to the most vulnerable and / or raise the debt to GDP ratio to 53%.
Today, in terms of world markets, the stock markets rise due to the hope about the economic incentives in the United States and also to the optimism about Italy that it will reach the flattening of the coronavirus curve.
The price of oil grows too; the WIT registers 24.3 dollars per barrel (2.1% daily) and the BRENT 28 dollars per barrel (2.9% daily).
In Colombia the stock market falls -0.5% and the Market Representative Rate for today is 4.079 pesos per dollar.
