Words of the President of the Republic of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe Vélez, at the Special Meeting of the Andean Presidential Council (Via teleconference)
Bogotá (Colombia) / Cusco (Peru), December 7, 2004

Our countries need to overcome the antagonism between short-term and long-term growth. Any expression of short-term growth should be inserted within a horizon of long-term growth and that growth must be accompanied by the building of a growing social cohesion.

In order to reach this long-term growth with social cohesion, we need to become integrated with all of the world’s markets with equity and to develop an internal growth policy that is totally inclusive.

Important steps have been taken toward integration with other markets. Two short years ago, few could even image the possibility of integration between the Andean Community and MERCOSUR. This step was taken rapidly, it was taken judiciously, it was taken equitably and now sends a good political signal and, at the same time, opens up a major possibility for economic integration with a view toward building social cohesion.

Recently, what we call the Group of Three --Colombia, Venezuela, and Mexico-- decided to incorporate Panama. A development of the greatest importance is Colombia’s acceptance as an observer in the Panama-Puebla Agreement in the interest of moving toward the integration of gas, where Venezuela, Peru, and Bolivia constitute major links toward the hemisphere’s integration. We must also use the Panama-Puebla Plan as a means of integrating our electric interconnection. It is necessary to define how, while fully respecting the environment, we build the road, because today there is communication between Panama and Alaska and between Colombia and Patagonia, but the segment between Colombia and Panama still remains to be built. We trust that progress can be made in this area, particularly with the understanding of Panamanian public opinion.

We are concerned over the fact that Central America has signed trade agreements with the United States and that we in the Andean Community –three countries-- are moving in this direction, but that there are no signs as yet of agreements between our countries and Central America.

We are concerned over the fact that many of us are integrated with Mexico, that integration with Mexico is a part of our great Latin American agenda, that integration with the United States is of special interest to our countries, while Canada is not part of the picture. Integration must be an equitable process, but also one that is dynamic and in continual expansion.

Our Andean Community integration with Mercosur must make us a larger team so that we can advance toward Asia, toward the great Chinese market. We must integrate more closely with the country that has served as an example of integration with the world –our neighbor, Chile—and having done so, with a stronger integration in place among the Andean Community countries, we must move toward the Pacific.

The immediately forthcoming negotiation process of the three Andean Community countries with the United States should stand as a clear example of equitable negotiation, of equity in dealing with issues that are as sensitive as agriculture, of equity in dealing with issues as sensitive as the treatment of asymmetries, of equity in dealing with issues as sensitive as intellectual property matters and biodiversity. The biodiversity of our countries, which serves as a treasure trove on which to draw for the equitable development of our communities, must be given due protection in these agreements.

It is politically very important here to draw attention to two elements: we are moving ahead with these integration processes for purposes of economic growth along a path of equity, safeguarding the rights of our sister countries that are integrated with us and are not participating in these new integration processes. The contradiction between outward growth and inclusion-building, social cohesion-building inward growth must be totally eradicated. Outward growth should serve as a support through equitable treatment for improving inclusion, which, in turn, should be increased and should be continuously spur inward growth.

The poverty of our countries and the inequity are cause for shame, but at the same time they pose a challenge and the possibilities they offer for overcoming poverty are enormous. In building equity, we have the possibility to accelerate the growth of our economies through an inward-looking strategy. Every citizen of our countries whom we incorporate into this inclusive process will be one more actor enlisted in our undertaking, one more actor to underpin our long-term growth.

A variable that is fundamental in this panorama is education. Education is the foremost variable for being able to build productivity, for being able to build competitiveness, for being able to make income distribution more equitable, and for being able to move ahead technologically so that this integration process with the entire world economy can be a process that will make it possible for us to improve our productivity, our competitiveness, and our income.

If we do not advance technologically, but remain stationary where we are today, this integration with the world economy will be useless. For that reason, our nations must experience a continuous educational revolution.

The credit revolution, the democratizing of credit is highly important in the task of energizing our internal economy. Colombia’s experience has shown us that the entrepreneurial spirit of our countries is greater than their feeling of labor subjugation. Access to education and access to credit are fundamental.

This experience has also shown us that the lack of resources is not the main obstacle to access to credit –the resources are definitely there--; the main obstacle to our access to credit are the institutions that we must build in the public sector and in the private to identify projects, to train those who will possibly execute those projects, to monitor the project processes and to grant guarantees. Colombia’s experience in that area has shed important light on this matter.

Taxation must be a process in which we strike a balance between fiscal need, the construction of equity, and business trust, for these processes cannot be sustained, cannot be maintained without a great measure of trust on the part of investors. Unless investor trust is continuously fanned so that we receive growing amounts of investment, it will not be possible to build equity.

I have often told the Colombian people that unless we advance a social policy resting on growing trust and investment, in the end there will be nothing left to distribute. And this process must be accompanied by key concepts of taxation and key public spending practices. It is more important in building equity to define the destinations and means of public spending, than to define the sources of taxes.

If there is something we are determined to do in Colombia, it is to do eradicate corruption and to do away with clientilistic practices. Although originally grounded in purposes of equity, clientilism and bureaucracy have ended up impairing equity notoriously by diverting needed resources, thus affecting public spending.

Our communities must choose what the State will spend its funds on. Either it spends on showy, expensive bureaucracies or it spends on efficient social investment and this is what must definitely lead us to more equitable conditions.

In the degree to which we do our work properly in the area of taxation, in the area of public spending, we build up our capacity to demand that multilateral organizations redirect their policies.

I insist on this point. It is necessary, as President Toledo has stated on so many occasions, to reach agreements with the International Monetary Fund on the special accounting treatment our strategic investments must be given; otherwise, these strategic investments will remain on paper indefinitely.

I would like to transmit my warm greetings to all of you and, to sum up, we need to combine short-term with long-term growth, to combine the growth reached in terms of foreign markets with the growth consolidated in the rising inclusiveness of our societies by overcoming poverty.

Education, credit, public spending, taxation -- these are all fundamental for making those advances and it is absolutely necessary for the decisions of multilateral organizations to reciprocate our undertaking.

My warm greetings go to all of you. Thank-you very much.