Colombia issues 2027 budget by decree after Congress mismatch

The decree, Decree 1599 of October 22, 2026, issued by the finance ministry, fixes the 2027 budget at 634,952,040,871,099 pesos under Article 59 of the Organic Budget Statute, which puts the government’s own bill, with the changes approved in the first debate, into force when Congress does not enact a budget by midnight on October 20. Of the total, 391.38 trillion pesos is operating expenditure, 155.43 trillion is debt service and 88.14 trillion is investment, the finance ministry confirmed. The process broke down over Article 65 of the bill, which covers joint hedging operations by the fiscal income and fuel price stabilization funds: the Chamber of Representatives kept a modification the Senate had dropped, the two texts were never reconciled in time, and Vice President José Manuel Restrepo and Finance Minister Miguel Gómez said the bill had been approved in both chambers and was neither sunk nor rejected, only caught by a legislative error. Because the decreed text is the first-debate version, additions made in later plenary debates fall away, including about 3 trillion pesos each for health and for energy and gas subsidies, and opposition senator David Racero of the Pacto Histórico has announced legal challenges to the decree, El Espectador reported.