El rompecabezas de la intervención económica territorial

The article attempts to replace the concept of re­gional policy with that of territorial economic policy. The first concerns itself with the regula­tion of the gaps of nacional development having as the main actor the central State. The second combines the first with local development poli­cy. It is bottom-up based, constructed from the localities and regions, and uses its own resourc­es. Traditionally two strategies of regional policy have been combined: the transference of more dynamic economic activities, and the improve­ ment of the supply of factors to less developed areas. Viewed in this general scope, the Colom­bian experience has various peculiarities. On one hand, the efforts to territorially  redistribute  the public resources of investrnent and social expense have combined the norm, expressed in the fiscal formulas of decentralization together with tradi­tion, and are manifest in the participation of the regions in the national bureaucracy. The inade­ quacy of these formulas is expressed in the pro­liferation of specific and disperse regional measures, related to precise themes such as the peace pro­cess, the eradication of illegal crops, the preven­ tion and attention todisasters, the management of natural resources and rulral development. To­ gether they compase a jigsaw puzzle of measures of regional economic intervention. The social, political, and economic crisis of the country has such clear territorial expressions that to overcome them seems to demand the formulation of a well­ coordinated and consistent territorial economic policy. To take on this challenge not only implies changes to the instruments currently used, but also the development of new approaches in the field of regional economic research.