Over the last decade, Colombia has increasingly acknowledged the importance of incorporating gender-responsive budgets in its planning and budgeting processes. Thus, in 2012 the High Presidential Council for Women’s Equality (CEPEM) presented the Public Policy Guidelines on Gender Equality for Women, which included the incorporation of gender-responsive plans and budgets in their national and territorial planning.

In 2015, based on the provisions of the law, the National Planning Department (DNP) and the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (MHCP) were tasked with the design of a mechanism to get the national government’s entities to include the gender differential approach in their planning and budgeting processes. In 2019, another law established that those same institutions should define a budget tracer or classifier for women’s equality, as well as the specific obligation of the different entities part of the nation’s general budget to draft a report on results achieved and resources allocated for the current cycle.

In this context, the Directorate of Public Finance and Investments, through the Subdirectorate of Projects and Information for Public Investment, published the Operations Manual on Budget Tracers, which includes the different categories of the cross-cutting policy on women’s equality. On the other hand, the Gender Subdirectorate of the DNP, in coordination with the MHCP and the High Presidential Council for Women’s Equality (CPEM), developed a Guide on the Inclusion of the Gender Perspective in the policy cycle and the Use of the Budget Tracer for Women’s Equality.

In 2020, the CPEM submitted to the Colombian Congress a report on the 2019 management cycle. The results described in it show that, by the end of the 2019 management cycle, 27 sectors and 66 entities of the Nation’s General Budget had already prioritized the allocation of resources using the tracer on women’s equity.