Colombia’s President Iván Duque has brushed off investor concerns about government finances and ruled out tax increases in the near future, betting instead on a swift economic recovery to overcome the twin shocks of coronavirus and low oil prices.
The Andean nation was Latin America’s fastest-growing economy before the pandemic hit, expanding 3.4 per cent last year, and has a long record of prudent economic policy which has helped it overcome periodic bouts of political and social turbulence.
In an interview with the Financial Times, the 43-year-old conservative president, a former official at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, pointed to the successful issuance last week of $2.5bn in sovereign bonds as evidence of “confidence in Colombia and confidence in our macroeconomic policy”.