Petro lashes out at Banrep: 'It's leading the economy to financial vampirism'

President Gustavo Petro lashed out once again against the Bank of the Republic this Saturday , after it was revealed that the bank sent a letter to Constitutional Court judge Jorge Enrique Ibáñez requesting clarification from the court regarding the entry into force of the pension system reform.

(Read: Pension reform: Banrep asks the Court for clarification on the entry into force of the Law ).

The head of state's latest criticism of the Bank's technical team came in a message on his X account, in which he commented on a post by Fabio Arias, president of the Unitary Workers' Central (CUT).

In his tweet, the union leader accused the Bank of the Republic of opposing the Petro government .

(See: Interest rates: an intermittent cycle of cuts is expected in the second half of the year ).

"Not only are they keeping interest rates sky-high, at 9.25%, to benefit financial capital despite the fact that annual inflation has dropped to 4.82%, but they are now asking the Constitutional Court to postpone the entry into force of Pension Law 2381 of 2024 with the purpose of delaying the entitlement to the solidarity income for the 3 million senior citizens. The Court does not have jurisdiction over this, but it is the last straw that they say that the government is allegedly a poor executor of the budget, but the bank accepts that it is ineffective in its legal obligations to form and operate the trust that will manage the mandatory Colpensiones contributions, since it was already known since July 16, 2024, that they should form it. It is opposition disguised as confessed administrative inefficiency," Arias wrote this Saturday.

In response to the comment, President Petro joined the criticism and said that the Bank of the Republic is leading the Colombian economy toward financial vampirism .

"The board of directors of the Bank of the Republic, due to ideology and prejudice—class hatred, you might say—is leading the Colombian economy toward financial vampirism, when I proposed, on the contrary, to boost real production," Petro wrote.

And according to the head of state, "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."

(Also: The outstanding areas of poverty that cannot be overcome with economic growth ).

According to the president, with the issuer's decisions, "the banks become vampires of the economy, and we all pay taxes to the financial system, which was created to boost production, not crush it."

For the president, small and medium-sized businesses , "associated and cooperative," had to take charge of moving forward and leading the Colombian economy, alongside the working people.

Letter to the Court

In the letter sent to the Constitutional Court, the Bank of the Republic requested that the Plenary Chamber consider postponing the entry into force of the pension reform until at least three months after the publication of the ruling declaring the law constitutional.

The issuer stated that it is necessary to clarify everything related to the entry into force of the new law, considering that the reform was scheduled to take effect on July 1, rather than upon its sanction, which is scheduled to take effect on June 14 of this year.

PORTFOLIO