The Colombian minister of mines and energy said Tuesday that the upcoming presidential elections do not make the country less secure for foreign investors.
Hernan Martinez Torres was speaking at an international mining fair in Toronto, Canada.
He told press that Uribe’s pro-business and pro-security policies will continue no matter who wins the presidential elections in May.
“The leading candidates who are running for the next election are maintaining the same political discourse, with the three pillars on which President Uribe has based his government: democratic security, as he calls it, investor confidence and social investment,” Martinez said.
The minister said that Colombia expects investment in its mining sector to increase in 2010, up to $3 billion.
“We have more than 140 international companies working in Colombia right now and I don’t have a single report of problems with the FARC (revolutionary group),” Martinez said, reports Reuters.
Martinez claims that less than 3% of the country’s territory is unsafe for mining companies.