“We believe that the nation must hand over more responsibilities to departments and even to municipalities. It is hard to understand one office in the capital handles programs for 1101 municipalities, often ignoring departments and refusing to adjust to territorial development plans,” the document says.If Colombia wants to prepare a free trade pact with the United States, the country needs to decentralize its power to encourage economic development of the regions, the governors say.”If there really is going to be a greater interference of foreign trade in the economy by the future approval of the Free Trade Agreement with the United States (NAFTA) and agreements with the European Union, or simply by the dynamics of the globalization, we will have to construct not only the infrastructure of the regions like the coasts, but also the required institutional structures”.
