The fight against 'drop by drop' loans, a 100% Colombian product

The great power of the mafias is built by plugging the social holes that the States do not fill;

The more holes there are, the more space illegal businesses will find.

In Colombia, even today almost half of the population does not have access to bank loans, a mechanism for social advancement.

Plan B for those who need money is to resort to the so-called

drop by drop

, a figure that appeared in Colombia in the 90s, in Pablo Escobar's Medellín, of drugs and money laundering.

A system of quick loans with high interests in which collection is ensured through extortion or violence and that has spread to a large part of the region.

The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, wants to put a stop to them: “We want to generalize cheap credit in the popular economy so that it does not fall into the trickle-down of usurers.”

Drop by drop they kill and, sometimes, they die.

Any quick search on the Internet returns dozens of results with murders, suicides and executions for non-payments, extortion or debts.

Thousands of people, generally from the lowest social strata, are victims each year of these express loan systems for which installments are paid that can reach up to 20% daily interest.

According to a study by the Central University, gota a gota can move around 2.8 billion pesos a day just in interest in the main cities of Colombia, but it is no longer a national problem.

The underworld feeds on inequality and poverty and Latin America is fertile ground for this.

An investigation by the journalistic platform Connectas calculated that the expansion of these mafia groups already reaches 16 countries in the region.

Last summer, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele declared war on them.

The young president who imposed an emergency regime in El Salvador with which he managed in just two years to put an end to the gangs that made it one of the most dangerous countries in the world has plenty of any type of criminal to tarnish such a questioned security policy. for not respecting human rights as applauded by Salvadorans.

Last June, he announced the arrest of some 110 illegal moneylenders in his country, most of them Colombians, and warned that they will face Salvadoran justice, a prison labyrinth that is easy to enter and almost impossible to leave.

Bukele had previously given some 400 Colombians allegedly linked to these networks 72 hours to leave the country.

“Afterwards, we will not hear lamentations,” he threatened on Twitter.

Colombian law does not directly sanction money lending, but it does sanction usury and any type of intimidation or extortion that lenders resort to when the payment is late.

Access to these mafias is easier than it might seem, even with a click.

With the pandemic, networks made the leap to the internet and quick money delivery applications became popular in which the debtor is only asked for access to his photographic file and his contacts.

In the event of non-payment, threats begin that resort to the use of their own photographs to spread any defamation among those close to them.

Petro's plan is to discourage users from this parallel market with an agile way to access microcredits to finance productive projects or activities.

“I invite all the microentrepreneurs in the country, all the women heads of family who develop a business, all the small businesses that are out there, to stop financing themselves with the drop by drop and look for official mechanisms,” he announced in December the Minister of Finance.

The State will act as guarantor, which will avoid the need to find a co-debtor, and the requirements will be minimal, opening the door to credit for, among others, the more than 12 million informal workers (55% of the total) in the country. country.

Here you can consult the latest Letters from the correspondent

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