COLOMBIA

On November 15, the Congress published text that recommends approval in the first debate of the House of Representatives of Bill 189 of 2021, which issues a regulation for the economic stability and operation of the media. The bill must be debated in the Third Committee of the House of Representatives in the next few weeks. On the other hand, the Communications Regulation Commission (CRC) extended the deadline to comment on the draft of the Regulatory Agenda for 2022 and 2023. Comments may be sent until November 19 via e-mail to [email protected].

The purpose of Bill 189 is to establish measures to economically and operationally stabilize the activity of the media between 2023 and 2027. To this end, the initiative seeks to establish information as an essential good of public interest and to stimulate the work of journalists and subscriptions to printed and digital media through tax benefits. In addition, it implements a tax exemption on the income tax on the dividends of the information media and on the advertising they receive.  

In turn, the Communications Regulatory Commission published the Regulatory Agenda for 2022-2023, which sets forth the projects and regulatory activities that the Commission will address in the next term. Among the projects that the agency will promote are the updating of measures for the protection of children and adolescents, projects for measuring the quality of communications services and the review of the quality conditions for the provision of telecommunications services and the information reporting regime for audiovisual content. In addition, a normative update and improvement in the area of content will be implemented.