Colombia slashes wages for its legislators as public spending balloons ahead of election

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Colombia’s president on Tuesday reduced wages for members of Congress by approximately 30%, as the South American nation faces a budget crunch and gets ready to hold elections in the first semester of this year.

Congress members in Colombia earned approximately $13,000 a month last year, an amount that was about 32 times greater than the nation’s minimum wage.

The vast disparity in the earnings of legislators and average Colombians has often come under scrutiny in the South American country, with some members of Congress in recent years proposing bills to reduce their own wages.

But those initiatives have failed multiple times, and have been blocked by legislators who have argued that they need high wages for myriad reasons, that include investing their savings into future political campaigns.

With a decree issued on Tuesday, Colombian President Gustavo Petro eliminated a portion of the wages of Congress members known as the “bonus for special services” that was introduced over a decade ago to help cover relocation costs for members of Congress.

Without this bonus, wages received by Colombia’s pampered legislators will drop to about $9,400 a month, in a country where most workers earn monthly wages of about $500 or less.

In its decree Tuesday, Colombia’s government said that wages currently received by legislators are “disproportionate in relation to the average income of the (nation’s) population and the country’s economic reality.”

“Austerity measures are necessary to the extent that they don’t affect the fundamental rights of citizens” the decree said.

The measure will come into effect in July once a new Congress has been elected. Colombia holds legislative elections in March, which will be followed by presidential elections in May.

The move was praised by some members of Congress, including senator Angélica Lozano who described it on X as “a minimal measure of equity.”

However the president of Colombia’s senate Lidio García criticized the wage reduction, saying that Petro was trying to “punish” legislators who did not approve his social and economic reforms, including a tax bill that was rejected by Congress in December.

“While he was a congressman, for almost 20 years, Gustavo Petro received the special services bonus, without complaining about it,” García wrote on his X account.

Colombia’s government recently issued an economic emergency decree that enables Petro to raise taxes without congressional approval.

The government says it is trying to increase its budget by $4 billion this year, to cover payments to health insurance companies, pay for fuel subsidies and invest around $700 million in infrastructure that will enable the military to counter drone attacks from rebel groups.

Public spending has ballooned under Petro, Colombia’s first left wing president, to levels that exceed spending during the COVID-19 pandemic. Colombia’s national government had a budget of approximately $134 billion in 2025.