BOGOTA -(Dow Jones)- Colombia plans to start free trade talks with Turkey later this year, part of an ongoing effort by Bogota to broaden its trade ties around the world as hopes for a free trade agreement with the U.S. remain in doubt.<\/p>\n
A statement from Colombia’s trade ministry said officials from Turkey and Colombia met earlier this week in Ankara and agreed that a first round of talks could begin in Bogota as early as late May.<\/p>\n
The announcement comes a few weeks after the trade ministry said it hoped to wrap up a free trade deal with South Korea by late June and that it is also aiming for a free trade agreement with Japan.<\/p>\n
Colombia for years has been vying for a permanent free trade agreement with the U.S., its main trading partner, but lawmakers in Washington have so far failed to ratify any such deal.<\/p>\n
That’s led to frustration in Bogota, and President Juan Manuel Santos said recently that if a deal with the U.S. isn’t formalized soon, Colombia will give up trying. In the meantime, he said his government will continue pursuing other trade deals around the globe.<\/p>\n
Colombia’s push to increase the number of countries it trades with is also in response to a 2009 decision by Venezuela, its neighbor and a major trading partner, to begin cutting back on trade due in part to Bogota’s close ties with the U.S.<\/p>\n
Trade between Colombia and Turkey is minimal, reaching just $271 million last year. Colombia exported $214 million worth of products to Turkey, including coal. Turkey in turn shipped about $57 million worth of goods, including artillery parts, auto parts and textiles.<\/p>\n
-By Dan Molinski, Dow Jones Newswires; 57-310-867-6542; dan.molinski@ dowjones.com<\/p>\n
via Colombia Plans To Start Free Trade Talks With Turkey<\/span>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BOGOTA -(Dow Jones)- Colombia plans to start free trade talks with Turkey later this year, part of an ongoing effort by Bogota to broaden its trade ties around the world as hopes for a free trade agreement with the U.S. remain in doubt. A statement from Colombia’s trade ministry said officials from Turkey and Colombia […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":783839,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[380],"tags":[3717],"class_list":["post-31197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombia","tag-free-trade"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31197\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}