President Abelardo De La Espriella held a high-level meeting on Wednesday, August 19 at the Palacio de San Carlos with Medellín Mayor Federico Gutiérrez and Antioquia Governor Andrés Julián Rendón. Both officials presented him with a proposal to implement the "reconstruction through taxes" mechanism with the aim of accelerating the response to the earthquake that struck Colombia on August 10.
According to Rendón's explanation at the end of the meeting, the initiative proposes an extraordinary mechanism called REXI that would allow tax revenue to be directed to reconstruction. The governor noted that Colombia collects approximately 150 trillion Colombian pesos annually from income tax, funds that could be directed to reconstruction works.
Rendón also mentioned the possibility of works funded by royalties and cited as a successful precedent the Coffee Axis Repair Fund (FOREC), implemented almost 30 years ago. He indicated that this type of mechanism allows private parties to execute works more quickly, contributing additional resources if necessary and returning any surplus to the public treasury.
The governor expressed that the president liked the proposal and asked him to have the technical team from the Antioquia Department of Government—which has used this model extensively—put itself at the disposal of the national government to implement the mechanism in reconstruction. Officials indicated that the reconstruction process for the affected areas could cost more than 30 trillion Colombian pesos.
