Trucks loaded with aluminum and medicine crossed a bridge linking Colombia and Venezuela on Monday for the first time in seven years after diplomacy was restored, giving regional businesses hope of developing trade.
Colombia’s new leftist president, Gustavo Petro, who took office in August and temporarily moved to repair ties with the Venezuelan government, present as trucks crossed the Simon Bolivar International Bridge between Cucuta, Colombia, and San Antonio, Venezuela. It was once one of the busiest crossing topics between the two South American countries.
Citizens of border domains and business owners in either country expect the resumption of freight traffic to create jobs and thrive illegal trade.
“Hopefully we can reactivate the 1,200 direct jobs that have been lost,” said Sandra Guzmán Lizarazo, president of the Colombian Federation of International Trade Logistics Agents, which still had to close one of its 15 customs warehouses in the Colombian border city of Cucuta. when advertising traffic is blocked.
In 2015, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro ordered the closure of border crossings, which he described as cracking down on smuggling. Foot traffic eventually resumed and very limited shipping continued to cross the bridge further north.
Relations between Maduro’s socialist government and U. S. ally Colombia were already tense. They were even more tense after Maduro’s re-election in 2018, which Colombia, the United States and many other countries illegitimate. Diplomatic relations broke down the following year.
According to the Colombian-Venezuelan Chamber of Economic Integration, the industry between the two countries reached $2. 4 billion in 2014, but fell to around $406 million last year, with Venezuelan imports from Colombia maxing out. The Venezuela-based organization estimates that this year’s activity may exceed $1 billion if crossings are reopened to vehicular traffic.
The Venezuelan government has estimated that the industry in the year following the full reopening of the border could exceed $4 billion.
The first truck to cross the bridge entered Colombia with rolls of aluminum from Venezuela. The next truck moved in the opposite direction, with medication. Each one adorned with flags and honking when entering the neighboring country.
Petro said the trucking movement is a “symbol of unity” and said the border has never been closed.
“Globalization, first and foremost, is industry and unity among neighbors,” he told reporters after the event. “Whoever measures the flows of foreign industry, cultural flows, flows of people, will find that the maximum is between neighbors and so it was before sectarian madness took hold of hearts and brains. So it was between Colombia and Venezuela.
Venezuelan Transport Minister Ramon Velasquez shook hands with Petro several times as they met with an organization of officials, ambassadors from both countries, in the middle of the bridge.
Maduro did not attend the rite on the bridge. He has reduced his public appearances in relatively runaway spaces since 2018, when two drones detonated explosives near him at a military parade in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital.
Colombia and Venezuela share a border of about 1,370 kilometers. Bandits, drug traffickers, paramilitary teams and guerrillas take advantage of the remote and desolate landscape to operate, this did not deter the legal industry before Maduro ordered the closure of official border crossings.
All but two of the bridges are within a 45-mile radius that, before the closure, accounted for 60% of advertising activity among neighbors.
Javier Pabón, president of the board of directors of the Chamber of Commerce of Cúcuta, said that reopening the bridge to advertising traffic would possibly discourage smuggling, since businessmen would prefer to export their products legally and with all the guarantees.
“This is going to decrease the illicit intermediation that is for Venezuela,” Pabón said.
In addition to controlling contraband, one of the greatest demands facing governments is to guarantee security on the border, where there is a presence of illegal armed groups, such as the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army, the Clan del Golfo and dissident members of the extinct Revolutionary Party. Colombian Armed Forces.
Garcia Cano reported from Caracas, Venezuela.
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