Friday, September 18, 2015

Colombia needs to diversify beyond commodities

On Friday, Colombian business journal Portafolio spoke with Xavier Serbiá, an international financial analyst for CNN Money. Serbiá stressed that although Colombia has greatly benefitted from its oil and mining sectors, it is time for the country to move beyond commodities and develop its value added products.

He explained that the best way to do this is through focusing on education and developing the Colombian work force. The CNN analyst added that Colombia should be considered one of the top 5 economies in the region, thanks in large part to its macroeconomic stability.

Although Colombia needs to work on diversifying its economy, it also cannot lose sight of its economic base. La República published a lengthy piece explaining the extreme importance of offshore oil exploitation due to Colombia’s dwindling oil reserves. The business journal argues that offshore drilling is a difficult challenge that will need to be tackled jointly by all of the actors in the Colombian oil industry.


In other oil-related news, both Occidental Petroleum’s and Colombian state oil company Ecopetrol’s stock rose on news of their joint $2 billion investment to increase production at the La Cira-Infantas oil field. Despite Colombia’s bleak oil future, the market considers the oil companies’ investment to be a wise one.

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