Colombia and the city of Cali are ready to host the birth of the  Alianza del Pacifico (Pacific Alliance), a two day summit for Wednesday May 22 and Thursday, May 23.

The regional bloc consisting of Colombia, Chile, Peru and Mexico represents over 200 million people.

On Thursday, Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos will receive his counterparts Sebastián Piñera of Chile,  Ollanta Humala of Peru and Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico, in what the bloc plans to formalize a partnership that would them in the forefront of the regional economy and would open multiple opportunities for global trade.

Om Thursday the Latin American presidents will formally give life to the Pacific Alliance. The bloc will represent the equivalent population of Brazil and two thirds of the United States and generate a gross domestic product equal to 35% of all Latin America.

The Minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism, Sergio Diaz-Granados said that the four “together” represent “the eighth largest economy in the world,” which means a “strong possibility” of integration and global projection.

Some 250 businessmen from Latin America will be present for the two day event.

Colombia will be assuming the presidency of the Pacific Alliance pro-tempore and rotate among the participating countries. The headquarters of the Alliance will be in the city of Cali.

Other countries have their eyes on the Pacific Alliance. According to Colombia’s Foreign Ministry, Costa Rica’s presidenta Laura Chinchilla will attend the summit, and so will Panama’s president, Ricardo Martinelli. Both will be attending as “observers candidates” to join the bloc.

Also attending the summit will be Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper; Spain’s Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy and Guatemala’s president, Otto Perez.

High level delegates from Australia, Japan, New Zealand ad Uruguay has confirmed their attendance as well.

“I have no doubt point to the integration of the Pacific Alliance as the most important in Latin America has had its history,” president Santos said recently.

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Minister of Commerce for Colombia Sergio Diaz-Granados told local media that “the Costa Rica stage is well-advanced.” Costa Rica is in line to join the four Latin American states (Colombia, Chile, Peru and Mexico) that share Pacific coastlines and a willingness to develop stronger regional economic integration.

A free trade agreement with Costa Rica falls in line with the open market policies that President Juan Manuel Santos’ administration strongly believes make up the path toward development for Colombia. In addition to a free trade agreement with the US that went into effect roughly a year ago, Colombia is in the process of finalizing agreements with the EU and South Korea.

Beyond a series of bilateral trade agreements, Colombia has also joined the Pacific Alliance, an economic alliance that turns the resource-rich country’s focus toward Asia’s emerging economies.

The Pacific Alliance, formed in 2012, set framework for regional economic cooperation. Among the priorities shared by the four member states are capital market integration and free trade agreements. But Colombia Finance Minister Mauricio Cardenas hopes the alliance will move beyond issues of trade alone.

“We want the Pacific Alliance to be an alliance… where our capital markets are integrated so our companies can move much more freely in making investments in each of the four countries, ” said Cardenas, after meeting with the group’s finance ministers earlier in the month.

Colombia, Chile, Peru and Mexico are set to remove 90% of tariffs during the May 23rd summit in Cali, reported The Economist.

Trade with other Latin American states makes up roughly 27% of total global trade around the region. That is little compared with 63% in the European Union and 52% in Asia. But the Pacific Alliance could change that. The block’s combined output was just under Brazil’s annual GDP in 2012. And in 2011-2012 the alliance grew at 4.6% compared to Brazil’s 1.8%.

The group relies on the ethic of “open regionalism,” an idea that was popular among Latin American states in the 1990s. In 1991, Mercosur formed with the intention of putting those ideas into practice. Since then, however, most of its members, including Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela, have turned inward, letting protectionist economic policy cut off trade ties with regional neighbors in favor of domestic economy.

When in Cali, the Pacific Alliance will also take a technical look at what Japan’s membership would mean for the group. If the Alliance welcomes Japan as its 5th member, it will not only be taking a step toward opening its markets, but another leap toward Asia-Pacific integration.
Source: Colombia Reports

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Colombian Finance Minister Mauricio Cardenas said there’s no need to change the country’s monetary stance, as consumer confidence rebounds and growth picks up.

“The unanimous vision of the policy committee at its last meeting was to hold interest rates unchanged,” Cardenas told reporters in Bogota today. “Let’s say that at the moment I don’t see reasons for a change.”

The central bank held its policy rate at 3.25 percent at its April meeting, after cutting it 2 percentage points over the last year. Economists forecast that Colombia will hold the rate unchanged until the end of the 2013, according to the most recent central bank survey of analysts.

The economy expanded about 3 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, down from 3.1 percent growth in the fourth quarter of 2012, Cardenas said. The Finance Ministry now sees growth picking up again, boosted by government measures to bolster the housing sector and a “surprisingly positive” rebound in consumer confidence, Cardenas said.

Consumer confidence jumped the most in nearly two years in April, according to a report published by Fedesarrollo, a Bogota-based think tank. Cardenas reiterated the Finance Ministry’s forecast that the economy will grow 4.8 percent this year.

The central bank’s policy committee, which Cardenas chairs, will hold its next meeting May 31. Cardenas said he will recommend that the central bank buys $750 million per month from June until the end of the year. The bank’s current dollar purchase program, of at least $30 million per day, expires at the end of this month.

The yield on Colombia’s government peso bonds maturing in 2024 rose 1 basis point to 5.03 percent at 11:30 a.m. in Bogota. The peso weakened 0.2 percent to 1846.98 per U.S. dollar.

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The couple disappeared on Friday, but Spanish authorities only confirmed the kidnapping on Tuesday

The kidnappers contacted the hostages’ family and identified themselves as members of the left-wing rebels Farc, Colombian authorities say.

The group, which last year vowed to stop civilian hostage-taking, has not claimed responsibility.

‘Absolute discretion’
Angel Sanchez Fernandez and Maria Concepcion Marlaska Sedano were reportedly on their way to Cabo de La Vela, one of the region’s main tourist sites, when they disappeared.

Their car was reportedly found abandoned on Friday with a damaged windscreen.

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo said the government was co-operating with Colombian authorities, but refused to give any details about the kidnapping.

“The house rule is to keep absolute discretion [in these cases],” he told reporters.

The Farc have been involved in hundreds of kidnappings over the decades, but in recent years, the rebels said they had given up the activity and claimed to have released their hostages.

It is not rare for ordinary criminals to use the Farc’s name in an attempt to strengthen their bargaining position, correspondents say.

But neither Colombian authorities nor the rebels confirmed that the group had any participation in the latest kidnapping.

The Farc is involved in peace talks with the Colombian government to put an end to the nearly five decades old conflict.

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Colombian authorities announced Monday they will begin investigating “sex roulette,” a newly discovered sex game played by minors that got a 14-year old girl accidentally pregnant.

Child protection services across the country have been alerted to the practice, which left a 14 year old girl impregnated after taking part in a ‘carrousel’ in Colombia’s second city, Medellin. The girl told local press on Friday that she didn’t think she could get pregnant as “it was only for a short time, just a game.”

According to Dr. Luz Marina Pelaez, director of a government sexual health program in Medellin, the practice is far from new, stating:  “we have been hearing of cases like this for the past year, usually through reports from pregnant girls.”

The game, which reportedly consists of girls dancing in a circle while men take turns having sex with each of them, is common “at parties, in country houses or in places where there are no adults present” said Pelaez, adding that it “has its variations, but essentially it is group sex, which for the most part occurs indiscriminately and without any protection.”

Adriana Monsalve, the director of Colombia’s social services institution (ICBF) revealed in the wake of the case that they have been aware of the practice for some time, and have begun to sweep the country in an attempt to identify more cases.

“This was not an isolated case… We know for sure that this is happening, including in other cities like Bogota and Cali” said Monsalve, adding that since Medellin story broke the ICBF has also received complaints from other parts of the country, including the coffee region.

According to statistics from Medellin’s health secretary, nearly 7,000 women between the ages of 10 and 19 got pregnant last year, of which 82.5% were ended through clandestine abortions.

While no statistics currently exist linking the amount of teen pregnancies or contractions of sexual diseases to the game known as ‘sex roulette’, steps are being taken by social services, sexual health organizations and child protection institutions across the country to discover the extent of this trend.

Source: Colombia Reports

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Former U.S. President Clinton visited Colombia last week, meeting with President Juan Manuel Santos and visiting Bogota, where Mayor Gustavo Petro showed him around the city in an electric taxi.

Then Clinton took time out to visit with Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 86.

Marquez has been said to be suffering from dementia. Last summer, his brother, Jaime Garcia Marquez, announced that cancer treatments the writer had undergone hastened a memory decline.

“Chemotherapy saved his life, but it also destroyed many neurons, many defenses and cells, and accelerated the process,” he told the Guardian. “He has problems with his memory. Sometimes I cry because I feel like I’m losing him.”

Not everyone agreed. The head of the Gabriel Garcia Marquez New Journalism Foundation observed that he thought Garcia Marquez was no different than the average man of his age.

Perhaps that’s the case. Clinton seemed to be able to carry on a conversation with the author, according to a report from Agencia EFE. “Clinton said afterward that the conversation centered on family and that Garcia Marquez recalled that he had met the former president’s daughter, Chelsea, 20 years ago and the two had had a long chat about his books,” the report said.

Maybe that was the night in 1994 when the former president and Garcia Marquez had dinner at William Styron’s house with Carlos Fuentes, among others.

In Colombia last week, Clinton said that after Garcia Marquez met Chelsea, the author sent her all of his works that had been translated into English.

That would have included, of course, the novels “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” “The Autumn of the Patriarch,” “Love in the Time of Cholera,” “The General in His Labyrinth” and the novella “Chronicle of a Death Foretold.”

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(Reuters) – Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos hinted on Friday that he would seek re-election next year to ensure continuity of his policies – including peace talks with Marxist FARC rebels – though he did not explicitly announce his candidacy.

“I want clearly and firmly to see that the government’s policies continue after August 7, 2014,” Santos said, referring to the date a new administration would take office.

“I want the peace policy re-elected, I want the housing policy re-elected, those that have reduced poverty – re-elected,” he told reporters in Bogota.

Santos took the greatest risk of his political career last year by launching peace negotiations with the nation’s biggest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in the hope of ending five decades of war.

Talks have dragged on for almost seven months without reaching accord on the first of a five-point agenda, putting in doubt Santos’ goal that the two sides will reach agreement this year.

Santos, 61, told reporters in Bogota that he would make a formal announcement on his re-election plans in a “written, solemn” way by the November deadline.

“I don’t want the positive and deep changes that we are realizing to be left halfway down the road, or worse, to be reversed,” said Santos, a former newspaper editor and scion of one of the nation’s richest families.

“But I want to be respectful of the rules of play and so won’t take a formal decision about my future until the required date.”

Santos’s presidential bid – and success – may hinge on the outcome of the FARC talks. An end to the conflict would seal his place in history as well as likely ensure his re-election. While failure to close the deal by the November deadline could sway him away from another term.

The government’s battle against the FARC, Latin America’s biggest and longest-running guerrilla insurgency, has killed more than 100,000 people, made vast swathes of land too dangerous to farm and forced millions from their homes.

It also has diverted billions of dollars from the economy as legitimate industry is unable to function at full capacity and the government is forced to spend heavily on troops and weapons.

All past attempts to negotiate peace with the FARC have failed and resulted in a stronger and more energized rebel army.

In a move popular with millions of Colombia’s poor, Santos has sought to provide cheap housing to the most needy, offering 100,000 free homes and mortgages at rock bottom interest rates.

His housing minister, German Vargas Lleras, who led the free housing program, has resigned from the Cabinet, Santos also said on Friday, and will run a foundation that helped steer the president’s election win in 2010.

Vargas Lleras could be a “Plan B” for Santos if he decides not to run for re-election, Senator Armando Benedetti wrote in his Twitter account. Vargas Lleras, who ran against Santos in 2010, is now considered a Santos ally, and his probable heir.

No replacement for Vargas Lleras was announced.

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Farc lead negotiator Ivan Marquez said achieving lasting peace in Colombia would take “more time”.

He spoke as the rebels and the Colombian government marked six months since peace talks began.

President Juan Manuel Santos has said he hopes a deal can be reached within months rather than years.

Peace negotiations began in Cuba in November.

Mr Marquez told reporters in the capital, Havana, on Sunday that he did not understand why the pace of talks was being described as slow.

“You have been watching the Giro d’Italia (cycle race). Some people want us to go at this pace, but if we go at this pace, we will fail.”

“We have to approach these issues with serenity, with depth if we really want to form the solid basis to build a stable and long-lasting peace,” he said.

Talks remain stalled over the issue of land redistribution in Colombia, the first of a five-point agenda.

The Colombian government has promised to return millions of hectares of stolen land to displaced peasants, one of the rebels’ main demands.

But Bogota insists that the rebels must first put down their guns and cease hostilities.
‘Intensification of violence’

Jorge Restrepo, director of Colombia’s Conflict Analysis Resource Centre, a private and independent research group, told Efe news agency that “no big changes have happened” in Colombia since the talks began.

“We have seen an intensification of violence that violates the human rights of indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities and human rights defenders.”

Mr Restrepo argued that the Farc could be trying to gain time “to retrain… and to gather strength”.

Colombia’s internal conflict began in the 1960s.

It has already claimed the lives of tens of thousands people and left millions more displaced from their land.

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The company, which is 90%-controlled by Colombia’s government with the rest traded publicly here and abroad, reported a 20% drop in first-quarter net income from a year ago, to $1.97 billion. The decline was blamed partly on a drop in oil prices and a rise in operating costs amid persistent attacks by leftist Colombian rebels on Ecopetrol’s oil pipelines.

Ecopetrol shares fell briefly in early trading Monday to COP3,995 but have since recovered slightly. They were recently down 1.7% from Friday’s close at COP4,005. This compares with a 0.15% decline Monday in the Colombian Stock Exchange’s main Colcap index.

Ecopetrol has around 2 billion barrels of oil equivalent in proven reserves and a market capitalization of $97 billion, which makes the Colombian company’s ratio of market value to reserves much more expensive than neighboring Brazil’s Petroleo Brasileiro SA (PBR), or Exxon Mobil (XOM).

Some analysts say Ecopetrol’s shares could rebound if ongoing peace talks in Cuba between Colombia’s government and the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, are successful. A deal for peace after 50 years of war could mean the rebels would lay down their arms and abandon large areas of jungle territory they control, which could reopen huge swaths of Colombian land to oil exploration and drilling.

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Over the course of a week, Venezuelan courts sentenced seven Colombians and one Venezuelan to prison for kidnapping in the central state of Yaracuy, while an alleged kidnapping gang consisting of four Venezuelans and one Colombian was broken up in the border state of Tachira.

According to police sources cited by El Nacional, the cases are part of a trend that in recent months has seen Colombian and Venezuelan kidnappers working together both in western and central Venezuela. According to the newspaper, there have also been reports of binational gangs in the Capital District and the states of Merida and Zulia, near the border.

Over the last decade, Venezuela and Colombia have been on opposite trajectories when it comes to kidnapping. In 2012, Colombia recorded 85 percent less kidnappings than in 2002, when the country was renowned as the world’s kidnapping capital. In contrast, kidnapping in Venezuela rose by an estimated 430 percent between 1999 and 2011 (although statistics from Venezuelan should be approached cautiously, as a lack of trust in official figures has led to organizations using estimates rather than the officially reported numbers). In 2012, there were 1,970 kidnappings in Venezuela, according to a study by criminologist Fermin Marmol Garcia, compared to 305 in Colombia.

The Venezuela-Colombia border is a hive for criminal activity, much of it fuelled by the cross-border operations of narco-paramilitary groups such as the Rastrojos. Colombian guerrilla groups like the FARC and the ELN are know to conduct kidnapping operations in Colombian border states like Arauca, then move their victims into Venezuela, where the ransom is then collected. The general atmosphere of lawlessness in this border region has almost certainly contributed to the growth of binational kidnapping rings, including those which are now reportedly moving away from the frontier states and more deeply into Venezuelan territory.

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