The government of Colombia rejected this Saturday the statements of the president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, who announced the elimination of tariffs applied to Colombian products after holding a dialogue with the opposition presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella.
Noboa reported on Friday that, after talking with De la Espriella and confirming a common commitment to combat “narcoterrorism,” he decided to eliminate from June 1 the so-called security fee applied to imports from Colombia.
In response, Bogotá qualified his statements as a “deliberate interference” in the Colombian electoral process.
The Colombian Foreign Ministry responded through an official statement in which it maintained that the removal of tariff measures corresponds to compliance with a resolution of the Andean Community of Nations (CAN), an organization that ordered the elimination of mutual tariffs for affecting regional free trade.
The Colombian government rejected that Noboa presented the measure as a gesture of goodwill and warned that his statements constitute an “interference by a foreign leader” in Colombia’s internal affairs. According to the Foreign Ministry, his words violate the principle of non-intervention and threaten the country’s sovereignty.
The controversy takes place one day before the Colombian presidential elections, scheduled for this Sunday, in which citizens must choose the successor to President Gustavo Petro.
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Abelardo de la Espriella, candidate of the Defenders of the Fatherland movement, is among the candidates with the most support in the polls. Noboa did not specify whether he will maintain the elimination of tariffs if the officialist candidate Iván Cepeda, who also appears among the favorites, is elected.
The commercial tension between Ecuador and Colombia began in January, when Noboa imposed a security fee on Colombian imports. The Ecuadorian president justified the measure citing an alleged lack of control on the Colombian side of the border and a trade deficit of at least US$1 billion.
The fee started at 30%, then increased to 50%, and later reached 100%. Days before the last announcement, Noboa had indicated that from June 1 it would be reduced to 75%.
Petro’s government, for its part, applied tariffs of up to 75% on Ecuadorian products and banned the sale of energy to Ecuador.
The Andean Community of Nations resolved at the beginning of the month that mutual tariffs must be eliminated because they affect free trade and gave the two countries a deadline for their removal. Currently, the Community is resolving appeals to that resolution.
