Colombia’s security strategy lures travelers back

Surging highway traffic heralds the dramatic changes Colombia has undergone. People are no longer fearful of guerrilla abductions during road trips, and rising exports have fueled the need for new highways to transport goods.

 “Five years ago, it would have been impossible for people to travel by highway from Bogota to Medellin,” said Luis Guillermo Plata, Colombia’s minister of commerce, industry and tourism. “Many people drove to this Inter-American Development Bank meeting by car.”

 Plata was the keynote speaker during a recent BRAVO Council breakfast held in Medellin during the March 29-31 annual meeting of the Washington-based multilateral lending agency. The development bank meeting was intended to showcase Medellin, which shed its image of drug-connected violence to become a center for business and culture.

 Plata said that under the government’s security strategy, military escorts were offered as a way to encourage Colombians to venture onto the roadways. Gradually, highway kidnappings by leftist guerrillas became a thing of the past.

 Besides an update on the steps Colombia is taking in the face of the worldwide recession, participants in the BRAVO Council discussed nominations for the 2009 BRAVO Business Awards, which will mark their 15th anniversary during the awards ceremony on October 30 in Miami.

 Colombia is facing a financial contraction, falling export earnings, declining foreign investment and a drop in remittances from Colombians living abroad, mainly in recession-wracked countries such as Spain and the United States.

 But Plata said the government was trying to counteract the recession by accelerating investment in the country’s infrastructure.

 “It is a question of carrying out these projects more rapidly, spending the money faster to maintain dynamics and above all to make sure employment is not affected,” said Plata.

 Expanding tourism and rising exports, which surged from US$11 billion in 2000 to US$33 billion last year, means that Colombia urgently needs new roads, along with ports, airports and other vital transportation links, Plata said.

 Colombia is still waiting for the U.S. Congress to approve a trade and investment agreement. Plata said regional trade was important, noting that the country exported 45,000 cars to Venezuela last year and was working to re-establish a quota for Colombian-made vehicles in neighboring countries, as well as maintain its trade preferences with Ecuador.

 Maria Antonieta de Bonilla, the governor of the Central Bank of Guatemala, also addressed the breakfast to describe her 2007 BRAVO Business Awards for innovative leader. Building on a system to centralize and computerize all central government budgetary information, de Bonilla extended the system to computerize spending and tax collection from local and provincial governments. 

Photo: (L-R) Gustavo Ardila, president of Bancoldex; María Antonieta de Bonilla, governor Central Bank of Guatemala; Ricardo Duarte, Colombian deputy trade minister.