Colombia in the News / July 19th, 2010

• Colombia Becomes The New Star of The South / Newsweek

By Mac Margolis. In a time of emerging-market juggernauts, Colombia gets little notice. Its $244 billion economy is only the fifth-largest in Latin America, a trifle next to Brazil, the $2 trillion regional powerhouse. Yet against all odds Colombia has become the country to watch in the hemisphere. In the past eight years the nation of 45 million has gone from a crime- and drug-addled candidate for failed state to a prospering dynamo. The once sluggish economy is on a roll. Oil and gas production are surging, and Colombia’s MSCI index jumped 15 percent between January and June, more than any other stock market this year.
This is more than a bull run. Since 2002, foreign direct investment has jumped fivefold (from $2 billion to $10 billion), while GDP per capita has doubled, to $5,700. The society that once was plagued by car bombs, brain drain, and capital flight is now debating how to avoid “Dutch disease,” the syndrome of too much foreign cash rolling in. Stable, booming, and democratic, Colombia has increasingly become “a bright star in the Latin American constellation,” as emerging-market analyst Walter Molano of BCP Securities calls it. Michael Geoghegan, CEO of HSBC, recently picked Colombia as a leader of a nascent block of midsize powers, the CIVETS (after the smallish, tree-dwelling cat), which stands for Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey, and South Africa. “These are the new BRICs,” he said. (...) Read more 

• Free Trade Deal With Colombia Is Needed / Denver Post - AP
  

If Denver's Biennial of the Americas draws attention to the value of trade in the Western Hemisphere, it also illustrates hard truths about the cost of sitting on the sidelines.
For four years, Congress has stalled a U.S-Colombia Free Trade agreement that would level the playing field for U.S. exports. Colorado's agricultural sector is paying the price.
"Nearly 100 percent of Colombian imports enter the U.S. duty-free. Zero percent of the United States' exports enter the Colombian market duty-free," said William Brownfield, the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, at a recent Biennial luncheon in Denver.
Free-trade agreements produce trade and commerce, which in turn create more investment and jobs, Brownfield said.
The Colombia FTA, signed in 2006, would immediately allow 80 percent of U.S. exports into Colombia duty-free. Although amended in 2007 to address human rights and labor concerns, Congress voted in 2008 to shelve the agreement indefinitely. (...) Read more