The Colombian entrepreneurship ecosystem received great news regarding its strengthening and development of innovation, given that on December 16 Decree 1732 of 2021 was approved, which regulates article 5 of the Entrepreneurship Law, with a Article related to exploratory regulation mechanisms for innovative business models in regulated industries and special surveillance and control environments, Sandbox. This was reported by the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism of Colombia.
Sandboxes or ‘regulatory sandboxes’ as they are also known, are spaces for flexibilization of existing regulations that create experimental environments for the development of innovative business models. These mechanisms arise due to differences in the development times of technological innovations and the development of regulations and regulations in the countries.
And with this decree, they mention from the Ministry of Commerce, these spaces are defined as “a type of exploratory regulatory mechanism that allows companies to test innovative products, services and business models, without immediately incurring all the normal regulatory consequences of participate in the corresponding activity ”.
That said, it is allowed with the issuance of the regulatory decree: “implement the Law, establish the procedure of public entities for regulation, inspection, surveillance and control, to plan, create, operate and close special surveillance and control environments; In addition, the intersectoral commission is created in charge of defining and evaluating the necessary requirements of the proposals for novel projects and, thus, being able to classify and transfer them to the entities responsible for supervision in order to apply this mechanism ”.
This was explained by the Ministry, who described having to be cross-cutting enough so that sandboxes can be created in different regulated industries, as one of the challenges to overcome through “general regulation, establishing rules that entities must follow to create a sandbox, but giving room for it to adjust to the particularities of each sector ”.
The Minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism, María Ximena Lombana, commented the following about the decree:
“With the approval of decree 1732 of 2021, our entrepreneurial ecosystem wins. With this signature, entrepreneurs and entities of the National Government already have a regulation that allows promoting test environments in which the operation and effects of new technologies are evaluated, but that at the same time allow determining the need to establish or make flexible the existing regulatory framework or the simplification of procedures “
Finally, it should be noted that In Colombia there are currently two Sandboxes in operation, according to the press release from the Ministry of Commerce. These are: those that have been working in the financial and information and communication technologies sectors, led by the Financial Regulation Unit (URF) and the Communications Regulation Commission (CRC).
For the application of the decree, a technical committee will be created in the National Competitiveness and Innovation System that will promote the adoption of these exploratory regulatory mechanisms, being INNpulsa Colombia the one that will exercise the role of the secretariat of said committee.
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