Colombia. According to the United Nations, radio is one of the most consumed media among the citizens of the world and is one of the forces that sustains democracy, guarantees access to information and preserves the culture and diversity of peoples.
For this reason, Minister Karen Abudinen ratifies her commitment to this axis of democracy on World Radio Day, which has been celebrated for 10 years every February 13 after the proclamation of UNESCO.
One of the achievements that the head of the ICT portfolio has to show is Resolution 2757 of 2020 that updated the compensation formulas for community, commercial and public interest FM broadcasters and that reduced the costs of access to spectrum, to strengthen the sustainability of the stations and their operation in the regions.
"We have led a real and strong commitment to this sector and we continue to join efforts so that broadcasters have a more favorable environment. In my management I have advanced in important decisions to achieve it and one of the goals continues to be to carry out the call for community broadcasters with an ethnic focus, "said the official.
On this aspect, in December of last year the comment stage on the draft terms of reference was closed. Once it is a reality, the call will offer 240 channels in 239 municipalities of 31 departments in which ethnic groups duly recognized live in places where there was an expression of interest. Between May 19 and July 3 of last year, 671 expressions of interest were received from 256 municipalities in all departments.
Additionally, the head of the portfolio recalled that another existing challenge is to verify compliance with the requirements requested from 178 organized communities that were declared viable so that they can be granted concession licenses for community broadcasters.
"We want to be the great ally of the media in their process of economic reactivation," said Abudinen, so he emphasized that four meetings and multiple training spaces have been held to share what is being done from the Ministry for sound broadcasting.
Because of this, the minister recalled that more than 1,500 stations (including community, commercial and public interest) benefited from the decision to postpone the payments that sound broadcasting operators had to make to the Single Fund for Information and Communications Technologies, worth 7,000 million pesos, a measure that will go until June of this year.
Another of the measures with which the National Government has supported the sector is the new National Technical Plan for Sound Broadcasting in FM, which aims to strengthen the provision of sound broadcasting service in the country, since the concessionaires will have a defined service area without interference to focus their management and provide a better service.
"Today the country has 1619 stations, of which 660 are commercial, 335 of public interest and 624 community. We continue to support this sector, which we consider key in all economic and social activities in the country," concluded the portfolio minister.
The most recent decision, thinking of supporting broadcasters, was Law 2066 of December 2020 that establishes special payment conditions so that community and public interest issuers that, due to the pandemic, have outstanding balances in favor of the Single ICT Fund, can have a 100% discount for a single time.
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