Inputs to the National Development Plan: Ambitious GOC Roadmap for Reform

The NDP is a legally binding document that outlines major ideas, initiatives, projects, and plans for the President's upcoming four-year term. It is framed by the country's macroeconomic and fiscal reality and aims to achieve social progress through security consolidation, sustained economic growth, job creation, and poverty reduction. The NDP, titled "Prosperity for All," was released by the Santos Administration on February 4, 2011, and approved by Congress on April 29, 2011. The USAID Public Policy Program provided crucial technical expertise on important public policy inputs to the Plan, delivering 14 concrete inputs on issues concerning land restitution and formalization, internally displaced peoples (IDPs), income generation, ethnic minorities, and other key areas. The Program's recommendations focused on enhancing the quality of the Government of Colombia's (GOC) response to vulnerable populations, improving interagency coordination, and introducing strategies to address bottlenecks in implementation. The Program's support was instrumental in the NDP sections focused on regional development, including the institutionalization of the Contrato Plan as a strategic guideline for strengthening regional capacity to design and implement development projects. The Program also contributed to the framework for the construction of an Unemployment Protection System based on individual savings accounts and a labor intermediation system. Additionally, the Program provided recommendations on real estate tax reform, environmental policy, and biodiversity policy, among other areas. The successful development of the NDP is an enormous accomplishment, but the support provided by the Program was just the first step. The GOC must now marshal the financial resources, political capital, and technical expertise necessary to implement the law and further develop the policies and programs outlined in the NDP. The NDP serves as a roadmap that the GOC, with the Program's support, must now begin to execute.