Where Data Tells the Story
© Voronoi 2025. All rights reserved.
In one third of Colombia’s departments 🇨🇴, the most important economic activity is public services 🏥📚⚖️🏛️: health, education, justice, and public administration. While in some regions—especially in the center of the country—commercial services 🛍️, agriculture 🌾, or industry 🏭 lead the economy, in others public administration accounts for up to half of local economic activity. This means that, in a large part of the national territory, the State is not only the provider of essential services and rights ✅, but also the main generator of jobs 👩💼👨💼 and income 💰.
However, this dependence reveals a structural challenge ⚠️. When most of a department’s GDP comes from the State, local economies become more vulnerable to fiscal policy decisions 📊 and changes in transfers from the central government 💸. The stability of economic dynamics depends less on business dynamism 🚀 and more on the State’s ability to sustain its spending 🏛️.