andean | IndusLatin

Nation rehabilitation: Colombia emerges from shadows, and eyes strong trade partnership with India

July 18th, 2010 Posted in andean, colombia, India

Colombia – the only risk is wanting to stay

Minister Santos speaking after 2010 CII Indo-LAC Conclave
The Globe and Mail

Indeed, The New York Times listed Colombia in its top 31 places to go in 2010, saying Bogotá has become “a role model of urban reinvention,” and calls Cartagena the next Buenos Aires.

Lonely Planet ranked Colombia in its top 10 list of happiest places in the world. Robert Reid, co-author of the last edition, says, “Would I take my mom there? I would in a heartbeat.

There are plenty of reasons [Colombia] should be an obvious tourist and trade destination. It has never defaulted on its debt. The oldest democracy in the southern hemisphere, it is also a land of great natural beauty.

The country is diverse, strapped by two oceans, the Atlantic and Pacific, laced with three mountain ranges, jungle, coastline, savannah and Caribbean islands. Its cloud forests are as rich in species as the Amazon, according to the Nature Conservancy. It also has the highest number of exotic bird species, frogs, and variety of orchids in the world; the World Wildlife Fund ranks it fifth in terms of biodiversity.

Many of the current changes afoot in Colombia are credited to outgoing President Alvaro Uribe’s security policies. Under his watch, backed by funding from the U.S., thousands of paramilitaries and guerrillas have exchanged guns for civilian clothes. FARC attacks have subsided, with most of the internal conflict shifting out of cities to remote areas. [A]fter thousands of presentations, greeted with polite skepticism, Canadians were finally tempted by “the physical story,” Mr. Dieppa says: “That it’s closer than you think [to North America]. That we have a 94-per-cent literacy rate. That 70 per cent of our electricity is green and that we’re the size of Ontario, but with five distinctive regions.”

The influx of foreign investment – investors from India to Argentina are laying big bets on the country’s prospects and diminished security risks – is one sign efforts are paying off. Canadian visits to Colombia have more than doubled in eight years. Air Canada now makes direct flights from Toronto or Vancouver to Bogotá four times a week. Global hotel chains such as Marriott are expanding in the country, lured by a 30-year tax exemption on services in new hotels. Cruise ships increased 35 per cent from 2008 to 2009.
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Jindal Steel and Power to produce gas in Bolivia

April 29th, 2009 Posted in andean, Infrastructure

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The Economic Times

India’s Jindal Steel and Power expects to start producing gas in Bolivia in June for export to Argentina, company representatives told the Andean nation’s president here.

Vikrant Gujral, vice president of the steel and energy major, told reporters about the company’s plans after Friday’s meeting with President Evo Morales, saying the gas supplies would come from a processing plant in the eastern province of Santa Cruz.

The company and its Bolivian partners began drilling at the El Palmar gas field at the end of March and have already invested around $7 million in the project.
Gujral said Morales was also informed about the progress in developing El Mutun, a giant iron ore field located in eastern Bolivia near the Brazilian border.

Jindal Steel has been working since 2007 at El Mutun, which is believed to contain some 40 billion tonnes of iron ore, making it one of the world’s largest deposits of the mineral.

The company has pledged to invest $2.1 billion in El Mutun over the next 40 years as part of a joint-venture deal with the Bolivian government.

Technorati Tags: bolivia, jindal steel, natural gas and mining, infrastructure

EU-Andean Community trade talks fall apart

November 25th, 2008 Posted in andean, colombia, Peru

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.::. Latinamerican Press ::..

The European Commission announced on Nov. 11 that talks for a trade pact between the EU and the Andean Community were officially over.

E.U. External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Walder said that last-ditch efforts to forge a region-to-region agreement had failed, and that it was moving ahead with separate agreements with Colombia and Peru.

Since negotiations for the trade pact began in June 2007, Andean Community members Bolivia and Ecuador – both staunch opponents of free trade agreements – had opposed the pace and scope of the future pact, vying instead for individual stipulations to protect their smaller and developing markets compared with Peru and Colombia.

Peru and Colombia, both of which have signed free trade agreements with the United States and are in the process of pursuing other agreements with several countries, especially in Asia, pushed for a speedy conclusion to the talks, with our without their fellow Andean Community members.

Technorati Tags: trade

Wonderful finds in Ecuador

November 3rd, 2008 Posted in andean, Tourism

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Philadelphia Inquirer | 11/02/2008

For such a small country (about the size of Colorado), Ecuador is remarkably diverse. Tucked between Colombia and Peru on South America’s west coast, it’s probably best known as the gateway to the Galapagos Islands. But it has three other ecosystems: the Amazon, the Pacific coast and the Andes, or Sierra, each with its own climate, terrain and culture.

It was the Andes that captured our attention. Running half the length of the country, the mountains are home to a dramatic avenue of volcanoes (including Cotopaxi, the highest active volcano in the world), deep valleys, lakes and farmland, not to mention the grand old haciendas we hoped to stay in.

The haciendas, also called hosterias, were established during the country’s Spanish colonization, when they were awarded as land grants by the king. As the estates flourished, their wealthy owners incorporated ornate tile work, terra cotta roofs, archways, verandas, murals, and central courtyards into their designs.

After the land reforms of the 1960s, many of the haciendas were broken up, refurbished and turned into inns, some with spas and activities such as horseback riding, mountain biking and hiking.

Technorati Tags: ecuador, tourism

Colombian coffee icon defies Starbucks doldrums

October 17th, 2008 Posted in andean, colombia, entrepreneurship

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International Herald Tribune

Starbucks may be struggling, but a Colombian cafe chain built on the fame of the world’s biggest coffee icon is determined to buck the trend.

Even as cash-short consumers cut back on gourmet blends, the Juan Valdez Cafe is selling coffee at 101 stores across Colombia, as well as at outposts in New York, Seattle, Philadelphia, Santiago, and Spain. It plans to add 500 more shops across the U.S., Latin America and Europe by 2010.

The Bogota-based chain has a unique premise: its shops are owned not by investors, but by 22,600 coffee-growing shareholders who opened them to advertise the beans they sell, not to make a profit.

The slick cafes named for a fictional coffee grower invented as an advertising pitchman nearly 50 years ago are meant to draw younger consumers, introducing them to Colombian coffee in hopes they’ll start requesting it at restaurants and grocery stores.

“What we’re doing is financing our promotion through a business” using the stores as tasting shops for customers to sample the product, said Gabriel Silva, CEO of the National Federation of Colombian Coffee Growers. The group created the chain in 2002 and now helps oversee it.

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Agenda set for Afro-Andeans

October 17th, 2008 Posted in andean, Arts, Culture and Society, Latin America

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Latinamerican Press

Afro-descendants of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru — member countries of the Andean Community, or CAN, bloc — met in late September to agree on steps to increase their political representation and participation in their home countries.

Andean organizations that compose the Andean Region Afro Civil Society umbrella group met in Cartagena, Colombia Sept. 18-19 to debate their “Plan of Action” for Afro-descendants of the region, a set of goals that includes the recognition and protection of individual and collective rights for this highly marginalized group, as well as improved education and inclusion in national and regional census.

With 26 percent of its 47 million inhabitants, Colombia has the largest Afro-descendant population in the Andes, according to the CAN. Ecuador follows with 10 percent, Peru with 7 percent.

Global Financial Crisis a Bad Sign for Andean Biodiversity

October 15th, 2008 Posted in andean, Ecology/Environment, Energy, Latin America

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Guatemala News |

The Andean region is rich in petroleum and natural gas deposits. There are more than 180 petroleum and natural gas fields across the
western Amazon, which comprises the five Andean countries, and 72
percent of the jungle territory of Peru is affected by plans for fossil
fuel exploitation, according to a study published in August by the
online scientific journal PLoS ONE.

According to the most recent official data from CAN, which date to 2004, production of oil and derivatives in Colombia was 686,000 barrels per day — three times the average national consumption. Colombia exported some 460,000 barrels per day.

Bolivia produces around 41 million cubic meters of natural gas per day, 35 million of which is exported to Brazil and Argentina.

This enormous sources of wealth is difficult to bring into line with environmental conservation and the standards for protected areas. It also challenges the effectiveness of international agreements ratified by the CAN nations, such as Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization, which protects the rights of indigenous peoples.

Governments and indigenous communities interpret the Convention text in different ways.
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