BOGOTA, I was able to go after some time away from the highway linking Bogota with Girardot, in the center of the country, and therefore is the way out to the Southwest Colombia and the rest of South America. One of the first reflections I made to see the zig-zagueante via in situ stagnant with stretches without running and without contacting other services and now abandoned, is that instead of talking about a regional small road we are facing the most important route for a country of 45 million people and, why not a highway of continental importance. Just because it is the exit corridor and access to the largest city in the region necessarily implies a more strong. When you think that six months ago that path should be in service on both carriageways and only now has 51 km. of 174 km. posed to unite the Magdalena Valley in Colombia's capital, can not but feel some anger, disappointment and sadness.
The existing empirical literature suggests that modern economic infrastructure investments contribute to output growth, cost reduction and improved profitability. A government can not therefore decide to undertake an infrastructure project without being forced to make a judicious analysis of costs and benefits of doing so: to contemplate clearly the set of conditions that achieve the chain of transmission infrastructure investments and economic growth . It is clear that consideration of infrastructure and services resulting from its operation must converge in the economic analysis, because the service would not exist without infrastructure and it does not play a role in itself but a related service.
No doubt this when we consider the benefit of a work as the highway between Bogota and Girardot, part of a corridor linking the Pacific coast of Colombia and its main port, Buenaventura, with Colombia's most populous area and the epicenter of economic activity around the country. Much of the exports coming out of Bogota and imports a large proportion going to it. The services provided in this way have exceeded its nascent years-load capacity, passenger transport, which has caused a significant drop in quality them. The travel times have increased from one city to another, the accident rate has increased and costs are a low marked in the product. The typical example is that the cost of transporting one ton of goods between Buenaventura and Bogota has the same cost to bring it from a Japanese port.
is not the same as a modern dual carriageway in the Llanos Orientales, low population, a highway that has a potential to cover a region of more than 15 million inhabitants. Colombia certainly progressed in the last decade in vial: a mere 50 km. dual carriageways in the country today the figure is the 970 km, a major limitation in the capacity of State institutions to enforce contracts. Thus road concessions in Colombia are similar to a failure and removes all the glitz that have won these mechanisms for managing infrastructure projects in countries like Chile. No one dual carriageways in Colombia that is concluded and the case of dual carriageway between Bogota and Girardot is the most unfortunate examples.
If Colombia wants to grow and that provision of infrastructure to transfer their benefits to growth and competitiveness, it is necessary that the institutional environment meets the conditions of a laggard in vial. The country abandoned the multimodal transport to the pettiness and political leaders, such decisions were disastrous as too low to build bridges over rivers to prevent navigation on the Magdalena, have experts compete with rail transport. After several decades in Colombia you were about inadequate roads, railways submerged by a river weeds and abandoned to their fate.
Carlos Caballero at his latest column in El Tiempo appeals to return to basics: infrastructure. Industrial relocation, opening markets and increasing complexity of economic transactions require greater efforts in the provision of modern infrastructure. The high costs of travel within the country could be explained in the high taxation and little competition, in the case of air transport market, and the deficiency of existing roads and mismanagement in the case of land transport. This reduces the efficiency of an economy that needs to grow well above their current average if you long to leave their backwardness. For now when I think of the road linking Bogota with Girardot think of a runner to advance. Hopefully they think the Government.
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