2023-08-13 05:59:42
12/08/2023
They made a “tempting” proposal to Colombia at a time when exports have been declining for seven months. Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa want the country to join their bloc, known as the Brics, which seeks to strengthen ties between major emerging economies, and whose members have a combined GDP of more than US$25 trillion.
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At the moment the country has not said “yes”, but it is evaluating the invitation; It is that it has so many pros and cons, since among the aspects to be evaluated is how a potential addition would impact the relationship with the United States.
María Claudia Lacouture, president of the Colombian-American Chamber of Commerce, Amcham Colombia, considered that an eventual decision by the country in this regard “might be a negative message, since (the Brics) has countries that are currently having disputes with the US. .and exert a counterbalance to the power and influence of other groups in the Western Hemisphere.”
Little commercial?
He also stated that it will be key to clarify what kind of invitation the Brics made, as these countries have had “a management framed more in strategic and geopolitical aspects than commercial, although logic indicates that the most important thing is to create synergies that strengthen the former and lead to the second.”
Indeed, when talking regarding the Brics, the achievements and individual weight of each of its members tend to be highlighted more than the achievements that they have had as a block at a commercial level. Of course, among the milestones since the group materialized in 2008 are the creation of the New Brics Development Bank, and an interbank cooperation mechanism, as well as the holding of annual assemblies since 2010.
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At the time, when referring to the proposal, the Minister of Finance, Ricardo Bonilla, noted that “we also have to look at Southeast Asia and other types of financial alternatives, Brics is an emerging alternative that might be interesting and they have invited us ( …) that has to be approved by Congress.”
Of the economies that constitute it, currently the most relevant for Colombia is China. In the first semester, the country made exports worth US$1,207.2 million there –led by oil–, which consolidated it as the second most important destination with a 5% share, following the United States (25.5 %).
Opportunities
For Javier Díaz, president of Analdex, the Colombian foreign trade union, “the fact that they have invited Colombia to be part of the group means that our country shows a performance and potential that cannot be ignored and can cause surprises in its development and in the possibilities it offers”.
According to him, for some time the Brics countries have been being monitored for the surprises that they might generate in their economic performance. “We have already pointed out that Colombia’s geographical location is exceptional compared to the proximity of a market like the US and the role it might play in those regional value networks; Those are elements that are very surely being observed from the outside.”
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But for Lacouture, from Amcham Colombia, in all its years of existence the Brics “has not achieved the interconnection and complementarity that it proposes and, even, in some sectors (its members) are in competition, for example, in manufacturing, technology or materials cousins”.
The executive insisted that the Brics is not a structured organization, and recalled that at the same time that this group became official, the Civets, made up of Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa, were proposed. “These didn’t even consider an approximation scheme and South Africa ended up putting an S at the end of the acronym for the former.”
For now, it remains to wait for the signals from the Government in relation to the proposal, in a difficult year for foreign trade. At the end of the first semester, national exports accumulated a fall of 13.6% and totaled US$24,553.4 million.
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