Colombia

Rural regions in Colombia have untapped potential to boost wealth and well-being in the country. Despite remarkable economic growth over the last two decades, Colombia’s development policy needs to increase its focus on rurality, as regional inequalities remain high by OECD standards and structural challenges still prevent greater development in rural places. This report assesses trends, challenges and opportunities of rural Colombia and examines the country’s rural development policy. It offers recommendations to mobilise rural assets and improve rural well-being with a focus on: strengthening multi-government coordination and policy implementation; enhancing transport and broadband connectivity as well as accessibility to quality education and health and; improving land use management in rural Colombia.

The review examines how higher education institutions are supporting innovation and entrepreneurship in their surrounding communities. The study focuses on eleven universities located in six countries in Latin America: Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. The study finds that selected institutions are actively supporting entrepreneurs (university students, but also local entrepreneurs) through courses, incubation and acceleration activities. It also shows that universities are actively engaging with external stakeholders in their surrounding communities, to spur innovation through joint-research, organisation of events (such as festivals, competition). It finds that that while COVID-19 pandemic brought about some challenges, universities managed to stay afloat and keep a steady stream of support to entrepreneurs and partners. The review also illustrates the challenges that universities face when developing these activities (lack of funding, unclear regulation for intellectual property development, etc.) and highlights some opportunities that universities should leverage, particularly in the current context.

Labour informality remains a critical challenge for Colombia with over 60% of workers in informal jobs with no access to social security benefits, except health. To address the inherent challenges posed by a large informal sector, this paper explores the role that cooperatives can play in driving formalisation in Colombia. It presents the negative impacts of informality on the economy and how the social and solidarity economy, and cooperatives in particular, offer an important model for informal workers to transit towards formalisation (Section 1). It provides facts and figures about the cooperative sector as well as factors contributing to its development and barriers that hinder its expansion (Section 2). It considers the benefits and challenges of the compliance based approach to supervise cooperatives and provides policy orientations to strengthen the sector (Section 3).

In 2017, Colombia launched a novel public policy to stimulate the creative economy, building on the success of previous policy initiatives to support the cultural and creative sectors. The Orange Economy policy is unique for its transversal approach to supporting the creative economy and mainstreaming culture across diverse policy portfolios, beyond cultural policy. The report provides a comparative overview of Colombia’s culture and creative sectors relative to OECD peers and reviews progress in policy implementation. It provides a specific focus on Colombia’s push to foster creative districts as tool for local development across the country, including policy examples based on nine districts across the globe. The report maps the financial ecosystem for the creative economy in Colombia. Recommendations draw on international good practice to suggest ways Colombia can best leverage creative economy opportunities.

This OECD National Urban Policy Review of Colombia provides a comprehensive assessment of the country’s national urban policy ‘the System of Cities’ and of different sectoral policies that affect urban life: transport, housing, land use, and digitalisation. Colombia has entered the 2020s facing five intertwined crises: the COVID-19 pandemic, rising levels of poverty and inequality, a wave of mass international migration, the peace process consolidation, and the climate emergency. As the country seeks an answer to all those challenges, Colombia’s social and economic prosperity and environmental sustainability will be more tightly linked to the functioning of its cities and its urban governance system. This OECD review makes the case for an integrated, placed-based and inclusive urban development model and urban agenda that seize immediate opportunities that arise in fiscal, economic and sectorial policies, and protect hard-won gains from years of experience of urban policy implementation in the country. Designing a new national urban policy for Colombia – Ciudades 4.0 – demands a critical rethinking of whether urban areas are meeting the needs of all Colombians, and how different urban-related policies could help transform them for the better.

The COVID-19 crisis has had a profound impact on SME access to finance. In particular, the sudden drop in revenues created acute liquidity shortages, threatening the survival of many viable businesses. The report documents an increase in demand for bank lending in the first half of 2020, and a steady supply of credit thanks to government interventions. On the other hand, other sources of finance declined, in particular early-stage equity. This paper, a special edition of Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs, focuses on the impacts of COVID-19 on SME access to finance, along with government policy responses. It reveals that the pre-crisis financing environment was broadly favourable for SMEs and entrepreneurs, who benefited from low interest rates, loose credit standards and an increasingly diverse offer of financing instruments. It documents the unprecedented scope and scale of the policy responses undertaken by governments world-wide, and details their key characteristics, and outlines the principal issues and policy challenges for the next phases of the pandemic, such as the over-indebtedness of SMEs and the need to continue to foster a diverse range of financing instruments for SMEs.

Colombia, the fourth largest economy in Latin America, is back on track after decades of conflict. The country is looking to open up opportunities by addressing structural challenges, further benefiting from trade and investment, and increasing productivity. Colombia's march towards prosperity requires transforming the economy through a renewed policy approach that prioritises an expanded knowledge base, unlocks regional potential and fast tracks digital technologies. The success will depend on Colombia’s capacity to leverage its long-standing planning capacity and its ability to bring together all the relevant stakeholders. The Production Transformation Policy Review (PTPR) of Colombia provides a novel and timely assessment of the country's industrialisation strategies. It relies on international peer learning and domestic consensus building, and benefited from knowledge sharing through the OECD Initiative for Policy Dialogue on Global Value Chains, Production Transformation and Development.

This study examines the multi-level governance framework for public investment in Colombia. It provides a diagnosis of the strengths and challenges of the Colombian system and includes comparative data and a set of benchmarks to promote exchange of good practices and promote learning. It makes recommendations for how to further improve the system, make more effective use of existing resources and catch up to OECD countries in terms of infrastructure development . The review also suggests a set of indicators against which Colombia can measure its progress.