Colombia

In recent years Latin American nations have enthusiastically embraced renewable energy sources, and a total of $16.5bn has been invested in the segment across the continent. In November 2016 Chile inaugurated the $343m, 196-MW El Romero solar power plant, which provides enough power to fuel a city of 1m people; while Costa Rica ran on entirely...

In November 2016 Colombia received its first import of liquefied natural gas (LNG) at the Sociedad Portuaria El Cayao (SPEC) terminal in Cartagena. The cargo, sourced from Trinidad and Tobago’s Atlantic LNG facility, was delivered by a floating storage regasification unit (FSRU) owned by Norwegian firm Höegh Grace. A year after a serious...

Latin America has a population of more than 600m people and a combined GDP of over $5trn, and both have grown significantly since the turn of the century. Nonetheless, the region has been hit hard by the ebbing of the commodity super cycle in recent years, as well as still relatively sluggish global growth in the wake of the 2008-09 financial...

Colombia is the fifth-largest insurance market in Latin America by premiums collected. However, it features weak penetration and density – measures of premiums compared to the size of the economy and the population, respectively – compared to other large markets in the region.

The Colombian Stock Exchange (Bolsa de Valores de Colombia, BVC) was created in 2001 by merging the three independent stock exchanges that had been operating simultaneously since 1983. Market capitalisation increased consistently after its creation – helped by several state-owned companies going public – before reaching an all-time high of 70....

Developments in Colombia’s capital markets in recent years reflect those in the wider economy. The well-established sovereign fixed-income market has seen increased issuance as the government seeks to finance its widening budget deficit while rolling over its existing stock of debt. Albeit much smaller in scale, corporate debt issuance also...