Colombia's Economy Discussed at FEASS Lecture
On November 8, Bilkent University hosted Professor Pablo Navas, rector of the Universidad de los Andes in Colombia. Professor Navas delivered a lecture at FEASS entitled "Colombia within Latin America and Latin America within the World: Problems and Challenges."
Prof. Navas started his remarks by providing data on several economic indicators, comparing Latin American countries, including Colombia, with Turkey. Colombia is one of the larger countries in Latin America, with a population of around 47 million and the fifth-largest economy in the region.
Prof. Navas indicated that the Colombian economy stands out among Latin American economies as one with relatively stable growth. He made reference to the role played by the government's orthodox policies in ensuring this less volatile economic growth performance. This success, he noted, is also reflected in the declining unemployment rates in the country. Unemployment in Colombia has dropped from 16.9 percent in 2000 to 11 percent in 2011, with projections that it will fall to single digits in the coming years.
Despite this success in stable economic performance, there are, Prof. Navas pointed out, distributional inequalities within Colombia. In this context, he made reference to the role played by informality, corruption and political instability in the region. Nonetheless, the situation regarding these distributional inequalities is improving. Prof. Navas drew attention to the fact that the share of the middle class population in Colombia has been on the rise, increasing from 16 percent in 2002 to 25 percent in 2010.
During his presentation, he showed several figures pertaining to the tertiary education and research and development activities in Colombia, Latin America and Turkey, stating that he was very impressed with the evolution of tertiary education and R&D output in Turkey over the past decade.
Prof. Navas also discussed the increasing interaction between the Colombian and Turkish economies. He noted that the volume of international trade between Turkey and Colombia is currently around 1 billion USD, and stands to increase further as free-trade agreement talks between the two countries progress. The increase in trade volume was very significant in 2011, when it jumped by around 450 million in one year alone.
Prof. Navas concluded his discussion by answering questions from those attending the seminar.