Making a move to Bogota could be the future for the high-tech manufacturing industry, according to Haraldo Kalvo Stevenson, ex-newspaper man and now dapper rector of the prestigious Fundacion Universidad George Tadeo Lozana in Cartagena. Colombia is a stable and steady growth economy in a continent where instability is commonplace says Stevenson, now an academic teaching economics. He believes that, despite being labeled the drugs capital of the world, his favourite city is heading for greater things. Bogota would be an ideal manufacturing base for the high-tech industry as computer production requires a well-trained labour force and low overheads, he says. With a consistent annual economic growth of 5% and inflation at 21%, he points out, Colombia holds 43rd place in the World GNP ranking. On the face of it, Bogota would seem to be a manufacturer’s paradise, but a quick look at the region’s statistics may give pause for thought. Bogota is 2645 meters above sea level – one of the highest cities in the world – which can cause fairly serious respiratory problems for those unaccustomed to high altitudes, although this has not deterred 3M from establishing a distribution channel and, as may be expected, Microsoft is already present. With a population of close on five million, Bogota is the fastest growing city in the country, and is rapidly becoming one of the most significant cities in the whole of South America. Unfortunately, it also has one of the highest crime rates, thanks in part to the Cali cocaine cartel which, it is estimated, contributes more than $8,000m a year to the economy.
Woefully inadequate
The president, Ernesto Samper, meanwhile, is currently fighting allegations that he financed his election with drug money. Against this background, Stevenson and his colleagues at the university are preparing for the arrival of the first large scale corporate investors. Factory sites have been allocated and plans are afoot to create massive high-tech industrial estates to service the needs of the computer industry. All good, confidence building stuff for those corporations that may decide to create a South American outpost. But who will actually run those plants should they become operational is a little hazy. While large corporations have traditionally imported their own managers to run their overseas manufacturing concerns, Stevenson clearly sees this as a job for the Colombians themselves. We have made a huge investment in computer facilities, at our University in Bogota, to train experts to run the computer industry in Colombia, he says. Unfortunately for Colombia, there is also a rather large and persistent fly in its ointment. Telecom, the, state owned, telecommunications provider is woefully inadequate and completely incapable of providing the communications infrastructure needed to attract any large scale manufacturing operation to the country. But Stevenson is, again, undaunted. What the government have done to deal with this problem – and they do recognize that they have a problem – is to authorize competition in the Colombian telecommunications industry. There are now a growing number of companies specializing in International communications traffic. All that is needed now, says Stevenson, is a new progressive approach for Colombia to become a significant computing force. We were respected for our economic prudence in the 1970s and 1980s, but those policies may not be the formula for the future. Our politicians and economists need more motivation, which we hope will be forthcoming after the elections in Colombia next year. It is generally expected that a new President will be more liberal, he says. For, now, however, life in Bogota is probably only for the hardy.
This article first appeared in Computer Business Review.
