Paola Rosas, 41 years old, gets up at 3 in the morning. He leaves his house in a humble neighborhood in the southeastern mountains of Bogotá at 4 and arrives after 5 at the empanada stand he has in Chapinero.

Every day a distributor passes by and sells him about 70 empanadas. She resells them for 3,500 pesos (US$1) each.

He has to pay for his transportation and what they charge him to leave his spot in a parking lot at night.

With what he earns, he manages to pay for the university of the eldest of his two children.

Like Paola, Colombians usually work many hours a day.

According to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), while a person in Colombia works on average 43.2 hours a week, in Germany they work only 25.6.

All those hours of work, however, do not convert into greater wealth.

In fact, among all OECD member countries, Colombia registers the lowest labor productivity, which means that for every hour a person works in Colombia they produce less money than in any other country on the list.

It is a delay that not only affects Colombia but all of Latin America.

In fact, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has been warning for years that the region has not managed to increase its productivity in the last 45 years, while countries like South Korea or Ireland multiplied it several times in the same period.

But, even compared to the Latin American average, Colombia is more unproductive. What is this situation due to?

Although there is no agreement among economists, the experts consulted by BBC Mundo point out that it is a problem that is influenced by factors such as poor access to capital, public infrastructure problems, the regulation that governs companies and the gap between the educational system and what the labor market needs.

Like the economists, the two presidential candidates who face each other in the second round on June 21 differ in their view of the problem.

Iván Cepeda, from the left, says he wants to implement productive capitalism through what he calls an agrarian revolution and the encouragement of the “popular economy,” a term used by President Gustavo Petro to refer to people like Paola, who have microbusinesses.

The right-wing candidate, Abelardo de la Espriella, aims, for his part, to stimulate sectors such as oil (through fracking), mining and infrastructure, which require large capital investments but at the same time have the potential to produce a lot of money.

In any case, low productivity is a problem that, according to experts, should be on the mind of any president who wants to increase the income of Colombians and make the country's economy more competitive in the global market.

“What we should worry about is that people are working more hours than they should, and are receiving little money,” says Ricardo Salas, professor of Economics at Dartmouth University. “The salaries are not enough,” he adds.

“Productivity is immediately reflected in salaries,” explains the dean of economics at the Universidad de los Andes, Hernando Zuleta.

Little accumulated capital

The OECD itself explains, in its productivity report, that the amount each country produces per hour worked depends greatly on physical capital - buildings, machines, vehicles - and its intangible assets such as intellectual property - designs, patents, brands.

“The members of the OECD in general are much richer countries than Colombia, which have accumulated much more capital throughout history,” explains Hernando Zuleta. “There we have a differentiator.”

In Colombia, a large part of the businesses are informal, like Paola's, and have little or no capital.

According to the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE), in the first quarter of 2026, 55.3% of the population was informally employed.

It is a percentage that includes everything from the miners who extract gold with a pan on the banks of the Atrato River to the families who grow potatoes on small plots in the mountains of Boyacá and the women who, like Paola, sell food on the street in Bogotá.

“Productivity in the informal sector is much lower than productivity in the formal sector,” explains Zuleta. “We know this for two reasons: wages and added value, which are much lower in the informal sector than in the formal sector.”

“Subsistence businesses,” as economists call businesses like Paola's, generally do not have access to credit, subsidies, or training, precisely because they are informal.

According to Salas and Zuleta, this is why they end up trapped in the trap of unproductivity.

They produce barely enough to survive, and generally fail to save to reinvest and grow.

But that is just one of the problems.

The infrastructure problem

Professor Salas explains that, even if the farming family managed to produce more potatoes, it would be very difficult for them to transport and sell them, largely because there is no public infrastructure that connects them with their potential market.

“Since Colombia does not have a good infrastructure given the geography it has, it is very expensive to move products through the country,” and to this is added the challenge that armed violence implies for agricultural businesses, says the expert.

As a consequence, products do not reach their potential markets.

“Much of our agricultural production does not reach the port, and therefore we do not export many things that we could be exporting,” says Salas.

And he adds: “It also does not reach wholesale markets, which increases prices and makes us less efficient.”

That is to say, since small potato growers cannot bring their production to Bogotá due to high transportation costs, they end up selling it cheaper in a nearby town. And then in Bogotá there are fewer potatoes and it is more expensive.

“If the agricultural sector does not work, it is very difficult for other sectors to function, especially the industrial sector,” concludes Salas.

But the lack of infrastructure not only hinders the development of businesses in the countryside. It is also a challenge, for example, for Paola.

If she had a subway to get to her workplace and did not have to spend more than an hour on transportation, perhaps she would arrive less tired and could spend more time selling empanadas or doing other activities, analyzes Salas.

If she had access to a commercial location, for example through credit or subsidies, she would be more productive than having to drag her empanada stand when arriving and leaving.

All this without taking into account that, since there are so many people in her situation, Paola has a lot of competition and therefore it is very difficult for her to expand her market.

“The person who gets off a subway, buys a coffee at Starbucks and enters their office is very different than a person who spends hours on a Transmilenio and then has to drag a cart of empanadas,” says Salas.

Professor Zuleta, for his part, emphasizes that, apart from the richest large cities, Colombia is made up of a large number of poor municipalities.

“All of these municipalities are not able to provide the public goods that are required for business formation.”

The discussion about regulation

In addition to not offering the necessary conditions for businesses to function, some economists consider that the state makes companies more unproductive due to the tax and bureaucratic burden it imposes on them.

Colombia, in fact, is the OECD country with the highest corporate income tax rate.

Professor Zuleta argues that in the country there are very few large and productive companies and many small and unproductive ones, in part because the tax system rewards the latter more than the former.

“There is this idea that companies are rich” and that the bigger they are, the more taxes they should be charged.

“This obviously makes growth a bad strategy for certain companies,” says Zuleta.

Contrary to Zuleta, some studies suggest that large companies in Colombia end up paying less taxes in relation to their profits than small and medium-sized companies, because they benefit from exemptions and have greater capacity for tax planning.