Coffee with the Consuls Colombia

by | Mar 11, 2013 | International Desk

Russ: Hi, I’m Russ Capper, and this is a special edition of the PKF Texas Entrepreneur’s Playbook coming to you from the Coffee with the Counsel’s event, the PKF Texas Greater Houston Partnership events featuring counsel generals with specific countries. Today, the country is Colombia, and I’m very pleased to have with me Claudia Rojas, the founder and executive director of the Colombia Texas Chamber of Commerce. Claudia, welcome to the Playbook.

Claudia: Good morning, Russ. Thank you for having me here. It’s a pleasure to be in your program today.

Russ: Well thank you for being here. Tell us about the Colombia Texas Chamber of Commerce.

Claudia: We started the chamber a little bit less than a year ago because we were receiving a lot of calls from companies interested in doing business in Colombia. Most of it because of the new free trade agreement that was signed last year between the US and Colombia.

Russ: Well, I understand the free trade agreement is looking like it has a lot of potential, but I also understand that the whole country and the economy of Colombia has just been doing fantastic.

Claudia: It is. I think we are exceeding all of our expectations in the GDP. Also one factor for example, in the amount of barrels per use by day, we had a goal of a million and a half for 2015. We are already at one million barrels a day. All our economics indicators are pointing up and exceeding our expectations.

Russ: Well that’s really neat, so I guess with this emergence of oil and gas industry over there that’s growing significantly, that sort of connects you pretty strongly with Houston, Texas.

Claudia: It is. Colombia wasn’t traditionally an oil and gas producer country, but in the last year, it has become. And now, we are receiving the benefits of the royalties that have been redistributed among the country. We had had to change a lot of policies to adapt to this boom and this new country that we are in. And of course, being in Houston, which is the capital of the world in the oil and gas industry, we are in the place that this chamber needs to be.

Russ: Right, well, I understand you recently had an event, and it was to recruit some oil and gas experts, upstream experts, and you an incredible turnout. And these are people that maybe even lived in Colombia before they came here. Is that right?

Claudia: Yes, actually, they even lived here or they are Colombians that are working for big oil and gas companies. And they have traveled all over the world. They have lived in many, many countries, and now a corpitrol is calling all that talent back. So we’re inviting Colombians, but we are also inviting people that would be attracted to live in a beautiful country as ours.

Russ: Okay, well Claudia, I really appreciate you sharing your story with us.

Claudia: Thank you so much, and I thank you again for the opportunity to talk about the chamber.

Russ: You bet. All right, that’s Claudia Rojas, the founder and executive director of the Texas Colombia Chamber of Commerce, and this has been a Thought Leader Production, brought to you by PKF Texas, the Entrepreneur’s Playbook.

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