No agreement to debate the payment system and capital markets bill
2 diciembre 2021

 COLOMBIA

On December 1, the Senate Plenary dealt with bill 413 on the reform of the payment system and capital markets. However, the discussion on the bill ended after not reaching the necessary quorum to vote on the impediments of the senators. The Minister of Finance and Public Credit, José Manuel Restrepo, participated in the meeting and the senators expressed their concerns regarding possible conflicts of interest. The debate is expected to be resumed in the next few days.

The treatment of the bill was hindered by the discussion surrounding the possible conflicts of interest of senators and political parties financed by financial entities. The senator author of the bill, María del Rosario Guerra (Centro Democrático – ruling party), urged the legislators to omit such impediments since “all parties and senators have at some time received financing or credit”, so that it would be impossible to establish any type of financial regulation.

Opposition senators, on the other hand, expressed their concern about the progress of the initiative for several reasons. While senators such as Luis Fernando Velasco (Partido Liberal – opposition) maintained that it is a bill that explicitly benefits the financial sector, others expressed that adequate impediments must be established to avoid any type of personal benefit by senators.

In turn, the Minister of Finance and Public Credit, José Manuel Restrepo, defended the bill, since it seeks to “promote financial inclusion, promote competition, facilitate and organize the regulation in some sub-sectors, modernize the sector to benefit small businessmen, who will not need to use so much cash to carry out transactions”. Finally, the debate was suspended when the necessary quorum was not reached to vote on the last block of impediments, so it is expected to be resumed in the next few days. 

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