COLOMBIA: Time To Strengthen Trade With Cuba - Santos

(RTTNews) - Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos started a business conference in Cuba aimed to identify trade opportunities. "It's the ideal moment to take advantage of these good relations that we have with Cuba," he said.

The president arrived in Havana this week with a group of businesspeople who will analyze opportunities for trade and investment between Bogot? and Havana.

The delegation, organized by Colombia's Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism, involves more than a dozen entrepreneurs from sectors such as construction, packaging, agriculture, food, electricity and electronics, engineering and petroleum services, energy and chemicals.

"We are interested in opening our integration to the rest of Latin America and the world," Santos said. He noted that the highest dividend of the peace that Cuba helped to build in Colombia is economic growth, "given that a vast percentage of the territory that remained unexploited because of the war now will be able to produce," said the Colombian Presidency in a statement.

Cuba had a central place in the peace talks and negotiations between Bogot? and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) since the meetings that led to a final peace agreement were held both in Havana and in Oslo.