World
Colombia declares an economic emergency and creates a reconstruction fund four days after its earthquake
By Staff Writer | 14 August 2026
President Abelardo de la Espriella, three days into office when the magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck, has invoked the constitutional emergency power and set up a fund to channel donations into rebuilding hospitals, schools, roads and airports.
Colombia's government has declared a state of economic, social and ecological emergency in response to Monday's earthquake, which struck western Colombia and severely affected Choco, the Coffee Region and Valle del Cauca. The president invoked the measure explicitly because of fiscal pressure and limited budget headroom: the money to rebuild is not in the budget, and the declaration is how it is found.
The figures are those of the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management, presented by its director David Santiago Tamayo and current to half past nine on the morning of 13 August. The death toll had risen to 273. Another 3,824 people had received medical treatment. A further 377 remained missing.
The president had been in office for three days when the earthquake struck. A new administration is now running a reconstruction programme it did not plan and cannot yet fund.
The fund, and what it is for
De la Espriella announced the creation of what he called the Miracle Fund, described as an entity to channel national and international contributions towards rebuilding hospitals, educational centres, properties, roads and airports damaged by the earthquake. The point of a single vehicle is to make the flow of donations traceable, which matters when a good deal of the money will arrive from abroad and none of it has been appropriated by anyone's parliament.
This is undoubtedly a tragedy of enormous proportions, and our efforts are currently focused on those who remain missing
Abelardo de la Espriella, President of Colombia, in a televised address
Relief comes first and the list is specific. The government will pay public utility bills for affected families, subsidise rent for those who lost their homes, provide tax and financial relief, support the most vulnerable households directly, and put mechanisms in place for traders and small business owners. The stated first priority is roughly 24,000 families in the west of the country who have lost a home, a business or both.
What the emergency power actually does
An economic emergency gives the president three months in which to issue decrees on the matters it covers. That is the whole of the mechanism: a defined window in which the executive can move without the ordinary legislative timetable, after which the window closes.
It is a construction lawyer's point as much as a constitutional one. Three months of decree power is enough to set procurement rules, waive or modify permitting steps and commit funds. It is not enough to build anything. Whatever contractual framework the reconstruction runs on will therefore be settled inside that window and will govern work that continues for years after it has expired.
The bill
Finance Minister Miguel Gomez put the requirement at approximately 20 trillion Colombian pesos, about 6.4 billion United States dollars, as a minimum for reconstruction, and said the government was not at that stage considering tax rises to raise it. Those two statements sit awkwardly together and the reconciliation has not been published.
The president also framed the emergency as an opportunity, saying it must encompass measures that stimulate investment, reduce obstacles to project development and generate jobs in the affected areas. That is the familiar argument for reconstruction as stimulus, and it is usually right in the medium term and irrelevant in the first month.
Outside assistance has begun. The United Arab Emirates has allocated ten million dollars in urgent relief on the direction of its president. Set against a 6.4 billion dollar estimate, the arithmetic of the Miracle Fund is plain enough: it will need a great many more contributions than it has.