Category: Colombia

Colombia’s largest food-processing company, Inversiones Nacional de Chocolates, part of conglomerate GEA, has bought food company Meals de Colombia for an undisclosed sum. Chocolates had originally considered a partnership but decided in the end to buy Meals as part of its strategy to move into the ice-cream business. Meals specializes in ice-creams, dairy, and juices.

Colombia’s Central Bank has left the benchmark overnight lending rate unchanged at 6% for the fifth month in a row. Falling inflation has helped to keep interest rates at their three-year low level. Inflation slowed to 4.6% in the 12 months through January, the lowest annual rate in over 40 years, and are expected to drop down to 4.4% by the end of the year.

Colombian cooperative bank Central Cooperativa Coopdesarrollo, currently in liquidation, is up for sale. Fogafin, the country’s deposit insurance fund and banking cooperatives regulator, has announced that it is inviting offers of a minimum of $310.6 million for the bank which has debts of around $28.9 million. Whoever buys Coopdesarrollo will also own microlender Megabanco, which is controlled by the cooperative bank and is seen as an attractive acquisition. Offers close on 16 March.

Colombian food company, Inversiones Nacionales de Chocolates, part of the country’s largest conglomerate, Medellín-based GEA, may issue up to $150 million of local-currency bonds to finance regional acquisition plans. This will be the first foray into the debt markets by Chocolates, which needs to add $150 million to its cash at hand to raise around $300 million needed to buy four companies in Central America and Peru. Chocolates is keen to take advantage of lower tariffs in Central America once Cafta is implemented. Pension funds seeking to diversify are seen as the likely buyers of the bonds.

Colombia has delayed until June 2007 the privatization of its gas distribution company Empresa Colombiana de Gas (Ecogas), the largest gas distributor in the country. The government said it has not had time to prepare the sale through an IPO, as planned. It expects to raise over $330 million through the sale. Ecogas transports natural gas from the north coast and eastern region of the country to the center of Colombia. It has a network of gas pipelines that stretch 3,644 kilometers (2,259 miles).

Colombian imports rose 26.6% last year to a record high of $21.2 billion from $16.7 billion in 2004. The rise in imports was driven by the demand for capital goods to feed the healthy annual economic growth of around 5%. Capital goods imports were up 12.8 percentage points compared with the previous year. The largest three exporting countries to Colombia accounted for around 44% of total imports: with the US exporting just over 28%, Mexico 8.5%, and China 7.6%.

Emgesa, the Colombian subsidiary of Spanish utility company Endesa, looks likely to buy the gas-fired Termocartagena power plant in the Bay of Cartagena for around $17 million from Ecuador’s Deposits Guarantee Agency (AGD). The Agency took over the plant in 1998 from Ecuador’s bankrupt Banco Popular. Emgesa will add three gas generation units with a total capacity of 186 MW to the eight hydro-electric power plants(1,865 MW) and a coal-fired thermal power plant (2323 MW) it already controls in Colombia. The purchase will diversify the company’s power-generation capacity and take overall capacity to 2,274 MW.

Colombia’s leading brokerage firm Interbolsa is to issue $102 million (230 billion pesos) worth of bonds to help with cashflow and expansion plans. Interbolsa plans to go to the market in April or May. Last year, the brokerage’s earnings rose 186% to $20 million. The company plans to push ahead with national and regional expansion over the next few years. It began operations last October in Panama and is currently eyeing Ecuador and Peru as possible markets in which to expand.

Colombia’s finance minister, Alberto Carrasquilla, is due in New York this week to meet with the major ratings agencies to lobby for an improvement in the perception of his country’s risk. Last Friday, the EMBI risk index, a measure of Colombia’s external debt, dropped to its lowest level ever of 162 points. And on the domestic front, Colombian benchmark treasuries due September 2014 were yielding 7.58% at the close of last week, the lowest rate since they were launched in 2004.

Colombia is planning to prepay around $580 million of its debt in the first half of this year to reduce its debt burden by canceling its highest-cost debt. The government will probably look to further lower the portion of its foreign-currency debt to reduce forex risk. Analysts believe multilateral credit and syndicated loans will also be targeted. Last year Colombia prepaid $2 billion of its debt including a $1.25 billion emergency credit granted by the Inter-American Development Bank in 2003 for five years. The loan represents 25% of its outstanding debt with the IDB.