Finance Minister Ricardo Bonilla said that in June he will review what to do with diesel. The official expects interest rates to drop in the second semester.
Web/LN Writing
Finance Minister Ricardo Bonilla has only been in charge of the portfolio for two weeks, but in these few days he has already sent forceful messages on issues such as rates, inflation and the Fuel Price Stabilization Fund (Fepc). In dialogue with Portfolio, the official spoke about the management that he seeks to give in finances and the portfolio.
First of all, he talked about the price of gasoline, which for this month of May had an increase of 600 pesos. “Since October, a plan was launched to gradually adjust the prices of current gasoline until they reached their international level, and that means that we have about eight months left to level them. If the price of oil continues to fall and the price of gasoline internationally, we would suddenly reduce it faster. The perspective today is to reach a level above $16,000 to stabilize the price with regular gasoline,” said the official.
On the other hand, regarding the issue of inflation, which had a slight decrease in April, the official indicated that they are already working so that this item continues to decline.
“Food inflation has had a substantial reduction in the last three months and we expect it to continue to decrease, because there are higher levels of supply. Although we still have problems with imported inputs, such as fungicides and fertilizers, work is already underway for Colombia to start producing some of them,” exclaimed the minister.
“There are other factors that persist. The most important is fuel. In that, the policy of gradually increasing prices is already defined, and we are monitoring that this adjustment does not raise inflation again. And there is another element, energy and gas. We are evaluating what happened to the agreements reached by the Minister of Mines, because this continues to be the second most important factor in inflation,” he said. Bonilla finished.
