commercial reactivation with Colombia will be slow

Carolina Moros is counting the days until the announcement by the elected president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, that he will reestablish relations with Venezuela, in what could be the last hope to save his business, takes place, but the expectations seem to be much greater than the reality.

Petro, who will become the first leftist in the Colombian presidency in August, said he will reopen the border with the neighboring country, with which relations have been broken since 2015 due to political friction between then-President Juan Manuel Santos and Venezuelan Nicolás Maduro. .

“It would be extremely important and perhaps vital for our company to have that border active,” said Moros, from Cosmogreen, which is dedicated to the production of biodegradable detergents in Cúcuta owned by two Colombians and two Venezuelans and which went from having 23 workers the last year to only two today.

From Venezuela, in San Antonio, Luis Arias, owner of a textile laundry company, hopes to have the detergents and chemicals he needs without having to bring them illegally along the trails that join the countries and where he must pay extortion to gangs that exercise control.

“The hope is that we reactivate the border with the help of both governments. We are waiting for them to tell us what the rules of the game are,” said the small businessman.

Colombia and Venezuela share a 2,219-kilometer border, where criminal gangs and guerrilla groups such as the National Liberation Army (ELN) and FARC dissidents converge.

Textile, footwear, metalworking, leather goods and bakery factories, among others, require raw material that they only get in Colombia, because some businessmen are forced to bring supplies through illegal steps, increasing the value of the product and exposing the lives of people at the hands of irregular groups.

LONG PROCESS

Trade between the two nations exceeded 7,000 million dollars in 2008, but fell sharply after then President Hugo Chávez froze it in protest at the signing of a military agreement between Bogotá and Washington.

Colombia’s trade balance with Venezuela barely reached 141.9 million dollars between January and April.

“The augury for relations with Colombia are the best, I’m sure, because right now we don’t have any,” said Diosdado Cabello after Petro’s victory.

But despite the good wishes, analysts and businessmen admit that the commercial reactivation could take time, because several steps must be taken, from customs procedures and the opening of markets, to restoring confidence.

“It will not be easy for a businessman to make an investment in the Venezuelan market until he is sure that he will recover it,” said Mauricio Santamaría, director of the ANIF economic think tank. “The Venezuelan economy and the way of government in that country is not that it is a great generator of confidence, it is going to be one more thing in the medium term.”

Even since the early 2000s during the mandate of the late Chávez, Venezuela failed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to Colombian businessmen, which withered business between the two countries.

“We must guarantee the advance payments initially while we are guaranteed that the money or foreign currency will return in the way that we need them to arrive urgently,” said Noralba Pérez, commercial director of Tejar de Pescadero, which before the closure of the border 30% of their sales of clay materials such as floors and veneers went to Venezuela.

The executive said that her company would benefit from importing coal from the neighboring country at a time when it has begun to be scarce locally due to high global demand.

“One has to be realistic (…) I hope that things happen, what I am very clear about is that it will not happen all at once,” said Nhora Patiño, from the Uniformes UNO factory. “I think that in a year or a year and a half I could pass my merchandise as it should be.”

David Silva, representative of the Autonomous Institute for the Economy of the Venezuelan state of Táchira, admitted that the process will be long. “All diplomatic personnel between the two countries must be restored to address the binational treaties.”

For Víctor Méndez, director of the Colombo-Venezuelan Chamber for the eastern region in Cúcuta, the opening of the border could generate some 120,000 jobs in the two countries in one year.

“I believe that in the first six months we are going to recover 50% of the activity we had before the closure and in the first year of work we are going to recover 100%,” he estimated.

Nelson Ureña, from the Association of Customs Auxiliaries of the state of Táchira (Asoata), is more optimistic and estimates that between 3 and 6 months the effects of carrying out the commercial opening with clear rules would begin to be seen.

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