Raphael John-Lall

Colom­bia’s Am­bas­sador to T&T William Bush as­sures that Colom­bia will con­tin­ue to main­tain close busi­ness ties with T&T in the ser­vices sec­tor as well as oth­er ar­eas.

“It is note­wor­thy that the Em­bassy of Colom­bia in T&T has a lot of con­nec­tions with the lo­cal pri­vate sec­tor in T&T and it is a great plea­sure for us to show the ca­pac­i­ty of Colom­bia in the ser­vices sec­tor and the val­ue of in­no­va­tion and cre­ativ­i­ty as well as share as much knowl­edge as we can,” he said.

Bush spoke last Wednes­day at the Do­ing Busi­ness with the World we­bi­nar se­ries host­ed by the T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTC­SI).

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Pro­Colom­bia, Rosa Gar­zon gave a pre­sen­ta­tion on the ser­vices sec­tor in Colom­bia and what it can of­fer to T&T.

Pro­Colom­bia is a Gov­ern­ment agency of the ex­ec­u­tive branch of the Gov­ern­ment of Colom­bia in charge of pro­mot­ing Colom­bian non-tra­di­tion­al ex­ports, in­ter­na­tion­al tourism and for­eign in­vest­ment to Colom­bia.

Gar­zon spoke about Colom­bia’s high-tech sec­tor and said cur­rent­ly Colom­bia ex­ports its ser­vices to “very so­phis­ti­cat­ed mar­kets.”

“Colom­bia has been the coun­try in sec­ond place with the most qual­i­fied work­force in South Amer­i­ca and the third largest IT mar­ket in Latin Amer­i­ca. Be­tween 2021 and 2022, 31 per cent of Colom­bia’s ex­ports be­long to in­dus­tries gen­er­at­ing 2.2 per cent of the coun­try’s for­mal em­ploy­ment. Colom­bia has a large pool of high­ly qual­i­fied IT spe­cial­ists and the Gov­ern­ment is look­ing to ex­pand mak­ing the coun­try an at­trac­tive lo­ca­tion for out­sourc­ing. The Colom­bian City of Medellin is home to sev­er­al tech schools and uni­ver­si­ties. Com­pa­nies have al­so opened new con­tact cen­tres thanks to the coun­try’s high tech ca­pa­bil­i­ties.”

She al­so gave de­tails about Colom­bia’s Busi­ness Process Out­sourc­ing (BPO) sec­tor.

“This sec­tor de­vel­ops op­por­tu­ni­ties in non-tra­di­tion­al com­mu­ni­ties such as stu­dents, moth­ers, heads of fam­i­lies, youths with­out ex­pe­ri­ences and mi­grants. This rep­re­sents 3.2 per cent of the coun­try’s em­ploy­ment. This sec­tor is very im­por­tant in gen­er­at­ing em­ploy­ment. Colom­bia has been ranked as the num­ber one des­ti­na­tion for BPO’s due to the con­nec­tiv­i­ty and in­ter­net com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

CEO of Na­ti­vApps and Colom­bian busi­ness­man, Gus­ta­vo de la Ve­ga, who al­so spoke dur­ing the we­bi­nar, said he hopes there will be di­rect flights be­tween the two coun­tries to fa­cil­i­tate more busi­ness and trade.

“Why don’t we have di­rect flights? That is some­thing we need to im­prove. For T&T, Colom­bia is a very good mar­ket. T&T en­tre­pre­neurs come to Colom­bia and sell us their ser­vices. I think we need to com­plete work­ing to­geth­er. We can cre­ate a win-win re­la­tion­ship to sup­port our mar­kets but al­so to ex­port from our coun­tries and to have a big­ger pres­ence all over Latin Amer­i­ca. T&T has a strong BPO sec­tor as T&T speaks Eng­lish and we Colom­bians need to train our peo­ple and there is an op­por­tu­ni­ty. Busi­ness peo­ple need to trav­el and meet each oth­er in per­son.”

At the we­bi­nar, the TTC­SI pres­i­dent Mark Edghill not­ed that Feb­ru­ary 2023 marked the 55th an­niver­sary of the es­tab­lish­ment of diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions be­tween the two coun­tries, and since its es­tab­lish­ment in 1968, the very ac­tive bi­lat­er­al re­la­tion­ship has been based on trade, tech­ni­cal co­op­er­a­tion and cul­tur­al ex­changes.

He said T&T has been the main Cari­com coun­try trad­ing with Colom­bia un­der the Cari­com-Colom­bia Par­tial--Scope Agree­ment on Trade, Eco­nom­ic and Tech­ni­cal Co­op­er­a­tion, which came in­to ef­fect in Ju­ly 1994.

He added that T&T’s prod­ucts have free ac­cess to Colom­bia’s mar­ket through the ex­emp­tion of tar­iffs and elim­i­na­tion non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers for prod­ucts spec­i­fied un­der the agree­ment, which pro­vides for two-way trade lib­er­al­i­sa­tion and trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion be­tween both coun­tries.

He pre­sent­ed da­ta from the Unit­ed Na­tions Com­trade data­base on in­ter­na­tion­al trade which shows that in 2021, T&T ex­port­ed an es­ti­mat­ed US$297 mil­lion worth of prod­ucts to Colom­bia.

“The bulk of that was from the pe­tro­le­um and petro­chem­i­cal sec­tors in min­er­al fu­els, oils and dis­til­la­tion prod­ucts, worth US$133.90 mil­lion, fer­tilis­ers, worth US$115.51 mil­lion, in­or­gan­ic chem­i­cals, pre­cious met­al com­pound and iso­topes val­ued at US$27.58 mil­lion, with oth­er size­able ex­ports; along with or­gan­ic chem­i­cals, val­ued at US$15.59 mil­lion.”

He al­so in­di­cat­ed that in that same year, the Com­trade da­ta shows that Colom­bia ex­port­ed US$50 mil­lion dol­lars to T&T.

He point­ed out that among Colom­bia’s top ex­ports to T&T in 2021 were sug­ars and sug­ar con­fec­tionery worth US$10.99 mil­lion, elec­tri­cal and elec­tron­ic equip­ment val­ued at US$8.01 mil­lion, plas­tics worth US$6.09 mil­lion and mis­cel­la­neous chem­i­cal prod­ucts val­ued at US$3.32 mil­lion.

He spoke about how T&T can learn from Colom­bia.

“We in T&T can learn from Colom­bia about the de­vel­op­ing and strength­en­ing our ser­vices sec­tor, which con­tributes rough­ly 11 per cent to our Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) com­pared to Colom­bia, where da­ta from Sta­tista shows that in 2022, the ser­vices sec­tor was the largest con­trib­u­tor to Colom­bia’s tril­lion dol­lar econ­o­my, with a 54.8 per cent share of GDP. In­dus­try con­tributed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 26.73 per cent, while agri­cul­ture’s share was 8.29 per cent. With our col­lab­o­ra­tion and knowl­edge of the Co­lum­bia ser­vices sec­tor, we at the TTC­SI are com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing growth in the con­tri­bu­tion of the ser­vices sec­tor to our GDP.”