Petro celebrated achievements of the first half of his term

Fifteen points

Taking stock of his administration, the president highlighted 15 points in which his administration has made the most progress, starting with the 1.6 million Colombians who he said have emerged from poverty and the more than 1.2 million who have left extreme poverty, and recalled that during the pandemic, the country “reached a monetary poverty rate of 40% of its population. Today we are at 33%.”

According to Petro, more than 500,000 senior citizens over 80 years of age benefit from the pension bonus that increased from 80,000 pesos (about 19.3 dollars today) to 225,000 pesos (about 54 dollars), and he said that “this is the greatest social revolution in the last 70 years.”

Referring to employment, he stressed that more than one million jobs had been created and that salaries had increased by 12%, while the cost of the family basket had been reduced.

In tourism, one of the Government’s flagships, he said that it managed to increase by 26.6% in 2023, “surpassing 5.8 million non-resident visitors in Colombia” and that “in the first half of this year it increased by 8.5%.”

He later stated that the country is making progress in the energy transition, as clean energy production, not including hydroelectric power, has gone from 0.2 gigawatts to two gigawatts.

He also noted that deforestation was reduced by 54% last year throughout the country, “the best figure in 23 years. And 61% in the Amazon rainforest.”

In this regard, he recalled that Cali, capital of the department of Valle del Cauca, will host COP16, which will take place from October 21 to November 1.

Finally, he said that so far this year, cocaine seizures have increased by 23%. “We have seized 1,500 tons in these two years, which has a market value of 42 billion dollars, more than oil and coal combined.”

“I am the first to acknowledge that we still have a long way to go. We have not achieved everything we would have liked, but we have done more than many think or say, among other things because the fiscal situation we found was not the most favorable,” he said.