Colombia Pledges to Send Pacific Alliance-Singapore Trade Deal to Congress

Bogotá Pitches Investors on Legal Certainty as Mexico Leads the Bloc

Colombia’s government told its Pacific Alliance partners this week that it will send Congress the bloc’s free-trade agreement with Singapore, a step meant to bring Bogotá into line with Chile and Peru, where the pact has been in force since May 2025.

The pledge came at the first meeting of the Alliance’s High-Level Group hosted by Mexico since it took over the bloc’s rotating presidency from Colombia earlier this year. The Grupo de Alto Nivel (High-Level Group, or GAN) — the vice ministers of foreign trade and foreign relations from Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru — met August 20 and 21, 2026, in Mexico City, in a session that photos released by the Alliance place inside Mexico’s Secretaría de Economía (Ministry of Economy).

Colombia’s vice minister of foreign trade, Sandra Carvajal Sáenz, told her counterparts that President Abelardo de la Espriella’s government would submit the Pacific Alliance-Singapore agreement to Congress for the legislative and Constitutional Court review that Colombian treaties require before they can take effect. Singapore, Chile and Peru completed those procedures and put the deal into force on May 3, 2025, three years after it was signed at a Pacific Alliance presidential summit in Colombia; Mexico and Colombia are the two Alliance members that have yet to ratify it.

The High-Level Group’s agenda covered four areas. On regional value chains and regulatory cooperation, the vice ministers looked for ways to integrate production across the four countries and cut the regulatory barriers that keep exporters from adding value before selling into outside markets. On public-private coordination, they discussed concrete steps to link the bloc’s technical working groups with governments and with the private-sector Consejo Empresarial de la Alianza del Pacífico (Pacific Alliance Business Council, or CEAP). On small and medium-sized enterprises, the goal is turning those businesses into a bigger driver of the bloc’s trade and growth. And on trade promotion, the vice ministers discussed how the four countries’ promotion agencies affect trade, investment and tourism, and agreed those agencies need to be a governmental priority. Carvajal told her counterparts Colombia was “fully willing to work hard, constructively and decisively with our Pacific Alliance partners to actively contribute to this integration mechanism having an increasingly tangible impact on our economies and, above all, on generating jobs and opportunities for our citizens.”

The vice ministers’ meeting followed a forum the CEAP held on attracting foreign investment to the bloc’s four economies. Speaking on behalf of Commerce, Industry and Tourism Minister Mauricio Gómez Amín, Carvajal said legal and regulatory stability — along with tools such as free-trade zones and trade-facilitation mechanisms — are priorities for the ministry. Gómez Amín made the same point in an August 10 statement from the ministry announcing his appointment: “Colombia needs clear rules, legal certainty and a government that sees business as an ally, not an adversary,” he said. “We are working to unblock projects and bring domestic and foreign capital into infrastructure, logistics, energy, connectivity, agribusiness, tourism and exportable services.”

Carvajal is one of two vice ministers Gómez Amín swore in on August 14, 2026, alongside Manuel Alejandro Naranjo Giraldo as vice minister of business development, El Heraldo reported. She joined the ministry after 17 years at ProColombia and, most recently, as the Caribbean regional manager for the exporters’ association Analdex. Gómez Amín, a Barranquilla lawyer and former senator, took over the ministry after de la Espriella’s government was sworn in this year, El Tiempo reported.

Mexico assumed the Pacific Alliance’s rotating presidency from Colombia on January 30, 2026, after Colombia closed out its own term with the signing of the Bogotá Act. The bloc, created in 2012 by the presidents of Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru to pursue free movement of goods, services, capital and people among its members, is also working through Costa Rica’s bid to join, a process that began when Alliance ministers accepted San José’s candidacy in December 2024, under Chile’s presidency, and has continued through working-group sessions on framework-agreement compliance and trade-protocol negotiations since.

Carvajal used the Mexico City trip to also hold separate bilateral meetings with counterparts from Costa Rica, Mexico, Chile and Peru, the ministry said.

Headline photo: Vice ministers of foreign trade and foreign relations from Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru meet as the Pacific Alliance’s High-Level Group at Mexico’s Secretaría de Economía in Mexico City, August 21, 2026. (Photo courtesy Pacific Alliance)