There are certain figures for Bogota that impress me, as I suppose they do everyone else, and that arouse some comments that will not exhaust the subject, but that may be interesting to analyze and may even point Colombian cities in the right direction.

Bogota’s per capita product, that is, the figure that results from dividing all the wealth created in the city in a year by the number of inhabitants, is $12,117, a total that may sound like enough but is actually quite low when compared to cities in the developed world. For example, San Francisco has 130,000 dollars and Munich, 81,000, between 10.7 and 6.6 times greater than those of Bogota, differences that come from the per capita products of the countries, because Colombia’s is 6,100 dollars, while those of the United States and Germany are 11.5 and 8.3 times higher (2021).

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Needless to say, other Colombian cities have lower per capita products than Bogota.

And public spending in every city in Colombia and the world – spending that supports progress in employment and wealth building, mobility, security, education, health, public services, etc. – is proportional to the wealth created by each inhabitant per year and the taxes paid.

This is the arithmetical explanation -although there are other important aspects that also count- that determines the great differences between the cities of Colombia and those of the developed world, especially if we compare all their areas and not only those that concentrate greater private and public investments and higher purchasing power of citizens. These countries, unlike Colombia, have fully developed their industry, agriculture, science, and technology.

For to create more employment and wealth in the cities of any country -the irreplaceable bases of all progress-, the determining factor is national policies, policies that cannot be modified unilaterally by local administrations, although sound district and municipal decisions also count for a great deal.

The above truths are the causes of other figures, these more well known. In Bogota there are 447 thousand unemployed and 1.3 million informal workers, 10.7 and 33 percent, respectively, of its inhabitants, percentages that are equal or worse in the rest of the country. Bogota is also the most socially unequal city in Colombia in terms of Gini, a factor that also generates social suffering and reduces people’s purchasing power and companies’ sales capacity.

It is clear that the national failures did not begin yesterday, but have been going on for decades and were aggravated by the opening and FTAs, which, among other evils, reduced the share of industry in Bogota’s GDP from 14.1 to 8.2 percent between 2006 and 2021. And mistakes have also been made in local decisions, such as the fact that the city is just building the subway, which should have started operating many years ago.

Accordingly, Colombia needs the national government to promote the creation of more jobs and wealth -something that Gustavo Petro is not seriously doing- and, at the same time, in Bogota and other cities, local administrations must truly support the progress of industry and the rest of the economy, just as they attend to other needs.

All cities must be governed with zero tolerance for corruption and inefficient spending of public resources, which are always so scarce in the face of citizens’ needs.

Bogota, June 16, 2023.

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