China moves to Venezuela and Colombia's second largest buyer
November 4, 2010
ND .- According to the BBC, China moved to Venezuela as the second buyer of Colombia and is also the one you sold into the Andean Community of Nations. China now buys 6.2% of Colombian exports, while Venezuela has fallen to 3.6%.

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China replaced Venezuela as the second buyer of Colombia, which now sells more to the Andean Community of Nations.

Since mid-2008, when Hugo Chávez announced that it would zero trade with Colombia, the country had to start looking for new markets. And found, despite the cost paid by the collapse of trade with its neighbor.

It was not easy, if you consider that for almost two decades, Venezuela, with which it shares 2,219 km of border, was the second destination of exports from Colombia.

"The task of finding new partners are doing. But a process of reaching new markets takes three years and we just a long year, "explains the BBC Javier Diaz, president of the Colombian Association of Foreign Trade, Analdex, which represents exporters.

But José Guillermo García, a professor of economics at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, he stresses the BBC that the new partners in Colombia bought mainly primary goods and not as many industrial products, as did Venezuela.

After the United States, which remains the main buyer, with 42.9%, now the second largest export destination is China, thanks to sales of oil and coal, according to latest reports from the Ministry of Commerce, tourism industry and Colombia.

"Arguably"

Between January and August 2010, Colombian sales to China grew by 223%, while exports to Venezuela fell by 71%, according to the report.

This means that China now buys 6.2% of Colombian exports, while Venezuela has fallen to 3.6%, compared with 16.2% in 2008 and 17.4% in 2007.

For areas of the world, the second destination of Colombian exports is now the European Union (12.1%), followed by the Andean Community of Nations, CAN (7.6%), highlighting the increase in sales to Ecuador and Peru.

Find new business partners was a task that was pending for several years, during which half of Colombian exports were concentrated in the U.S. and Venezuela.

Professor José Guillermo García BBC insists that the replacement is doing the Venezuelan market is very debatable. "

"The productive sectors that have been affected by the closure of Venezuela's market-such as automobiles, have not found a medley of markets and the situation is worse in the revaluation of the Colombian peso," said Garcia.

Other products

However, the president of Analdex is more optimistic. "We're not selling to the new members the same products that we sold to Venezuela," he says.

He added that Colombia "is in the process of adaptation of the product. Before very basic apparel sold them and now, to reach European markets, for example, are occurring in cotton sportswear "smart", which open in warm weather and close when it's cold. "

Now the relations between Colombia and Venezuela appear to be normalizing, as made evident last Tuesday's meeting between President Hugo Chávez and Juan Manuel Santos, in Caracas.

But the lesson learned from what happened between the two governments in recent years in Bogotá you know is better to put eggs in different baskets and not concentrated in a few.

A recent analysis by the ministry of commerce, industry and tourism in Bogota admits that "the improvement in the dynamics of Colombian exports to Venezuela were not immediately present."

And he attributed to the time required for recovery of business confidence, the process of diversification of Colombian exports, the difficulty of access to foreign exchange for Venezuelan importers and falling demand for Venezuela