Over 1,000 businesspeople from 14 countries sat down to talk in Colombia

More than a thousand entrepreneurs from as many as fourteen Central American and Caribbean countries, plus Colombia, huddled in a two-day powwow in the northern Colombian city of Cartagenas de Indias for the so-called Business Macro Round, a commercial effort aimed at looking for ways to egg on trade operations.

Summoned by the PROEXPORT-Colombia Exports Promotion Fund, attendants tried to pry open alternative markets for Colombian exports after the country’s sales to Venezuela skidded 70 percent in the first two months of the year driven by the two-month-long general strike staged by Venezuelan opposition sectors against president Hugo Chavez’s administration. Venezuela is Colombia’s second trade partner after the United States.

Organizers of the business round planned 4,500 business meetings between corporate Colombia and some 250 purchasers from Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago, plus Aruba and Curazao (Netherlands Antilles).

PROEXPORT-Colombia chairman Luis Guillermo Plata underscored the need to enhance the country’s trade ties with Central America and the Caribbean.

Some of Colombia’s sectors in the gathering included fashion design, textiles, leatherworks, foodstuffs, plastics, building materials, decorations, jewelries, goldsmiths and precious gems, heavy machinery, oil byproducts and chemicals, among others.

In addressing the meeting, Colombian minister of trade, industry and tourism Jorge Humberto Botero said his government expects sales to Central America and the Caribbean to soar up to $2.4 billion.