Colombian government agrees to work towards bilateral ceasefire with FARC

On Sunday, the Colombian government announced an agreement between the FARC and the country’s negotiators to speed up the long-running peace negotiations in Havana, Cuba, and to work towards a cease-fire even before negotiating a full peace accord. As part of the agreement, the Colombian military committed to scaling back its military operations against the FARC, assuming the leftist guerrilla organization keeps to its recently declared unilateral cease-fire. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos called this announcement a “new light of hope,” but placed a four-month deadline on the negotiations.

In recent months, the FARC had stepped up its attacks on Colombia’s oil infrastructure, carrying out a total of 22 different attacks targeting the country’s oil infrastructure. One of the attacks caused the worst oil spill in the last 10 years in Colombia.

In addition to the environmental damage, the attacks could severely affect Colombian oil production in the future. If the attacks continue, no oil companies will want to continue operating with such a high risk of danger; it would no longer be profitable nor safe. Companies would then decide to shut down their operations, and the oil industry would be dealt a serious blow.

The FARC likely carried out this devastating series of attacks as a demonstration to the Colombian government that it still has the ability to seriously damage the country’s interest. Given the ongoing oil crisis in Colombia, and the country’s reliance on revenues from oil production, it seems like the government took this threat seriously in agreeing to a partial ceasefire.

In other news, Colombian Finance Minister Mauricio Cárdenas told reporters not to worry about the slumping Colombian peso, which fell to its lowest level in the last 11 years. Cárdenas said that the weaker peso would help close Colombia’s current account gap and stimulate economic growth. He said, “The flexible exchange rate helps us to stimulate exports and substitute imports, so that the current account deficit falls. This is something we consider highly desirable.”