[LINK] "Colombia's Unconquered, Empty Half Can Be Developed, Santos Says"
Bloomberg's Christine Jenkins has a brief article about a push for development in Amazonian Colombia that has obvious potential environmental repercussions.
Remote, sparsely-populated regions of Colombia will see “spectacular growth” when they become open for development following a peace deal with Marxist rebels, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said.
“Half of our country is unconquered, unoccupied; there’s nothing there,” Santos said Friday in an interview with Bloomberg TV. “These are productive lands. There’s a lot of interest from private companies and we are establishing private-public initiatives to develop this half of the country.”
A peace deal would boost economic growth by 1.5-to-2 percentage points per year, with remote regions growing as fast as 9 percent, he said. Santos has set a March deadline for talks with the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to wrap up.
Most of Colombia’s 49 million inhabitants live in the Andes mountains and on the Caribbean and Pacific coasts. The vast plains and rain forests east of the Andes, which make up about half of the national territory, are very thinly inhabited. Vichada province, a territory about the size of Kentucky that borders Venezuela, has a population of 72,000.
Remote, sparsely-populated regions of Colombia will see “spectacular growth” when they become open for development following a peace deal with Marxist rebels, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said.
“Half of our country is unconquered, unoccupied; there’s nothing there,” Santos said Friday in an interview with Bloomberg TV. “These are productive lands. There’s a lot of interest from private companies and we are establishing private-public initiatives to develop this half of the country.”
A peace deal would boost economic growth by 1.5-to-2 percentage points per year, with remote regions growing as fast as 9 percent, he said. Santos has set a March deadline for talks with the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to wrap up.
Most of Colombia’s 49 million inhabitants live in the Andes mountains and on the Caribbean and Pacific coasts. The vast plains and rain forests east of the Andes, which make up about half of the national territory, are very thinly inhabited. Vichada province, a territory about the size of Kentucky that borders Venezuela, has a population of 72,000.