German Umana: “The opening of the border does not depend on a meeting between Petro and Maduro”

German Umana Mendoza (Bogota, 69 years old), the Minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism in Gustavo Petro’s cabinet, keeps his academic ways intact. “I feel more comfortable with the title of professor,” he admits without further formalities at the start of this interview given in his new office. Engineer and economist from the National University, he has always been linked to his Alma mater, where he has been a professor and Dean of Economics. A defender of Latin American integration, he comes from presiding over the Colombo-Venezuelan Chamber during the most critical years, a position from which he was very involved in the rapprochement between Bogota and Caracas to fully reopen the border and reactivate the flow of trade between the two countries. “This is a slow but sure recovery, stable, and recovering legality and institutionality”, he points out.

Ask. You have many family and academic ties with the National University. Do you feel like a representative of the public university in President Petro’s cabinet?

Response. My links with the National University are historical. My grandfather was a professor in the Santa Clara cloister; my father was a great professor at the National University, Eduardo Umana Luna; and my father’s cousin, Camilo Torres, founded the Faculty of Sociology with Orlando Fals Borda. My brother [Eduardo, un defensor de derechos humanos asesinado por paramilitares en 1998] and I, teachers. La Nacional was my alternative life to my family life, intellectually and academically. Of course, I am a person from the public university, but more than anything else from public education, which has to contribute to national development. Yes, I feel like a representative of the public university.

P. He was in Lima on Monday at the Andean Community summit, which President Petro intends to strengthen, and has even asked to include Chile, Venezuela and Argentina. Is that space going to compete with what was being built in the Pacific Alliance?

R. They are complementary spaces, because clearly the Andean Community is a project without Venezuela that has been strengthened since the 1990s from the point of view of free trade. That free trade has worked quite well, and what is being proposed with the Pacific Alliance project is the strengthening of trade and investment issues, and on these issues there is great complementarity between the Pacific Alliance and the Andean Community . Why? Because the Latin American countries are combined with an expectation of projection towards the Pacific with other countries.

P. This week also formally began the reestablishment of relations with Venezuela with the arrival of ambassadors Armando Benedetti and Felix Plasencia. How is the economic relationship between the two countries going to be rebuilt? What are the steps to take?

R. We have insisted that diplomatic relations had to be rebuilt. Ambassador Plasencia, a friend of economic integration, a man with a diplomatic career, has already taken office. Ambassador Benedetti took office, now some consulates are being opened that are fundamental, and already this week we are in talks for the reconstruction of the commercial relationship, which has never really been lost because through La Guajira, and by ship on the Caribbean coast , has continued to export and import. But the essential thing is the opening of cargo transport on the border between Norte de Santander and Tachira. From the technical point of view we are prepared, but we have to talk with our Venezuelan friends to determine the exact date of that opening.

P. Does the commercial and vehicular opening depend on a meeting between Petro and Maduro?

R. I don’t think it depends on the meeting between presidents Petro and Maduro, it depends on us being prepared from a logistical point of view, passing through the bridges and an authorization from our presidents to be able to open the border. But everything is ready, we are simply depending on a conversation that does not have to be a face-to-face meeting.

P. When do you expect trucks to cross the binational bridges that connect the department of Norte de Santander with the state of Tachira?

R. As soon as the conditions I mentioned are met.

P. Why does the border of Paraguachon, in La Guajira, work and not that of Norte de Santander?

R. The previous government did not try to pass humanitarian aid, with a concert and a reaction from Venezuela that involved many things, on the Paraguachon-Guarero border. There was definitely no understanding between the Venezuelan and Colombian governments, rather there were misunderstandings. Norte de Santander is a complex border, not only from a commercial point of view, but also from a political one. Now we are going to work a border in favor of the citizens of Norte de Santander-Tachira, with the passage of people, students, merchandise, and without the intervention of either country politically in the internal affairs of the other.

P. What are the expectations in the medium term for trade with Venezuela?

R. You don’t have to be pessimistic. We are not talking about the medium term, we are talking about a short term to begin to meet expectations. The expectation is that we can first have relations that tend towards trade balance, which is why it is as important as our exports to promote imports from Venezuela, to have the possibility of changing conditions while the Venezuelan productive structure recovers. Integration goes through the strengthening of borders.

P. And also recover the legality.

P. We have to recover the border against smuggling, passing through the trails, all the difficulties that are seen in this regard. Any businessperson, any exporter, will be more satisfied to cross a bridge safely than to cross a trail with insecurity. There are other conditions that are being discussed but they are already issues of another order, which have to do with the peace process, money laundering, drug trafficking, dissidence. This is an issue that the Foreign Minister is dealing with very seriously, and also [se esta tratando] in the talks between the Armed Forces of the two countries.

P. Could you put some figures to the projections of the commercial exchange?

R. In recent years, the Venezuelan Gross Domestic Product has fallen by nearly 75%. From 2015 to 2020 it recovers, stabilizes in 2021 and is already going to grow in the order of 18 to 22% in 2022. Hand in hand with this will be the recovery of Colombian-Venezuelan trade, and we calculate that this year, if we manage to open the border soon, we will be in the order of 1,000 million dollars, because we already have 316 million between January and June. For next year, due to the recovery of the energy sector and other sectors in Venezuela, when they will be able to export steel, aluminum, petrochemical products, which are complementary to our productive sectors, we could have something like 1,800 or 2,000 million dollars . And what we propose is that at the end of President Petro’s government, on August 7, 2026, we will have recovered levels close to 4,000 or 4,500 million dollars, which will be 65-70% compared to our best time in 2008, which was about 8,000 million dollars. This is a slow but sure recovery, stable, and recovering legality and institutionality.

P. Is the issue of debts to Colombian businessmen resolved?

P. Sometimes we are frozen in time, and I understand it because there were many years of misunderstanding. But it seems that we forgot that former President Chavez and former President Uribe made agreements at the time, and implied that of the 1,250 million dollars they owed us, without taking Avianca into account, they paid us more than 1,000 million. So the debts are small, there is a percentage that is registered in the Central Bank of Venezuela, which should not be more than 100 or 150 million dollars, which is no longer the magnitude of what we were talking about before. And on the other hand, there is the Avianca issue, but it is an issue that has been resolved. In fact, Avianca is once again requesting its entry into Venezuela, it has already been authorized by Colombian aeronautics and is awaiting authorization from Venezuela. We hope that in the month of September we can recover, not only with Avianca but with other airlines, direct flights to different destinations in Venezuela.

P. Does Colombia intend to buy back a majority stake in Monomeros?

R. It is something that we are analyzing, it is complex. The important thing for us is that we have to recover, at least in part, food sovereignty. To do so is to create balances in development. For that we need fertilizers and seeds. What we are studying is the strategy of how to obtain fertilizer production or to buy companies that produce fertilizers, to avoid any type of sanction that we may have. There are different ways, among them the one we are studying and that you mention.

P. How is food sovereignty achieved?

R. Unfortunately, for many years we signed treaties that implied a certain satisfaction for those who thought that because there were subsidies, domestic aid and other measures of equivalent effect, we would always have cheap food prices. With the Ukraine crisis, that was no longer true and we realized that we were totally unprotected, we had high prices and supply difficulties for what we received as imported goods. We have to create that balance between the imported and the national.

P. Is Colombia no longer going to sign free trade agreements?

P. We have so many, in which they gave us so many markets, that what we have to promote right now is the creation of an exportable supply. What do I get out of having all the markets open if I don’t have anything to export? So what we are going to dedicate ourselves to at this time is fundamentally to create exportable supply, to negotiate foreign investment that allows us to transfer technology, incorporate technical progress, develop human capacity, create small and medium-sized companies to integrate ourselves into international value chains.

P. The government intends to overcome extractivism. What are you going to replace it with?

R. Overcoming extractivism has to be a process, and in that process are the issues of coal, oil and gas. Of course we have some reserves, we have signed exploration contracts, the period for overcoming extractivism has been seriously evaluated. It’s a gradual thing. A large part of this will have to do with the new companies derived from the green economy, the circular economy, and the issue of peace and tourism, which may be the great generator of foreign exchange in the future. Of course, that’s not going to be in a year, or two, or five.

P. The president has said that tourism is called to replace the income from extractive industries, how do you intend to get Colombia to increase the number of tourists who visit it?

R. It is not so much to increase the number of tourists, but to change the conception of tourism. The bottom line is that we lost four years to strengthen the peace process. We are doing everything to change that condition. From the point of view of biodiversity, natural resources, the development needs of tertiary roads and others, have to do with strengthening the peace process. It is a change from normal tourism to green tourism.

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