The elected president of Colombia, Gustav Petro, announced this July 22, on his Twitter account, that he spoke with the Venezuelan Government for open the border with the neighboring country, in what would be one of the first foreign policy decisions to be applied since August 7.
(See: Sectors that would benefit from reactivating trade with Venezuela).
“I have communicated with the Venezuelan Government to open the borders and restore the full exercise of human rights on the border”, Petro wrote on his Twitter account.
Both Petro and former candidate Rodolfo Hernández, protagonists of the second electoral round, had promised restore relations with the neighboring country, suspended since 2019 by Nicolás Maduro, when the opposition leader Juan Guaidó, supported by the Duque government, tried to bring humanitarian aid across the border.
On June 20, through a statement, the government of Nicolás Maduro had asked Petro restore diplomatic relations between the two countries.
(See: Trade between Colombia and Venezuela would close 2022 at US$1.2 billion).
“The Bolivarian Government of Venezuela expresses the strongest will to work on the construction of a renewed stage of comprehensive relations for the common good of the nation that we share, protected by two sovereign republics, whose destiny can never be indifference, but rather solidarity, the cooperation and peace of brother peoples“, indicates the official communication that collects the newspaper EL TIEMPO.
It is worth noting that currently Pedestrian crossing of people is allowed at the border that divides the department of Norte de Santander with the state of Táchira, the most important. From the Colombian side, this circulation has been enabled since June 2021, while on the Venezuelan side it has been enabled since last October 2021, when the Maduro administration announced the “commercial reopening”.
This is how one of the border crossings was coming while it was totally ‘closed’.
From then on, the Venezuelan authorities lifted the containers that prevented vehicular passage through the binational bridges. However, from the Colombian side no measure was announced to restore commercial ties.
(See: 60.8% of migrants applied to the PPT between March and April 2022).
Colombian Migration He recalled that, since May 2022, the entry of Venezuelan citizens into the country through border points is free of ‘pick and ID’, having only the limitation of a period of 12 hours, between 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. p.m
Venezuela and Colombia share a border of more than 2,000 km, which includes, from the Venezuelan side, the states of Zulia, Apure and Amazonas, in addition to Táchira.
Various binational economic institutions have stated that the formal reopening of the border between Norte de Santander and Táchira could lead to trade between the two countries $1.2 billion by the end of 2022, in addition to improving the socioeconomic conditions of the border population.
(See: Maduro: Foreign oil companies will be able to return to production in Venezuela).
Currently, the exchange of goods between the two countries is carried out across the border between Maicao-Paraguachon-Guarero, between the department of La Guajira and the state of Zulia; and to a lesser extent by air or sea.
BRIEFCASE
