Colombia Moves to Revive Japan Trade Pact, Courts New Toyota Investment in Tokyo

Colombia is pressing to revive a stalled trade agreement with Japan and to draw new investment from Toyota Motor Corporation (NYSE: TM; TYO: 7203), after Minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism Mauricio Gómez Amín held two meetings in Tokyo on Tuesday, August 25, 2026, as part of an agenda aimed at positioning Colombia as a regional platform for production and investment.

“Japan is looking at Colombia again, and we are ready to capitalize on that confidence.”

— Mauricio Gómez Amín, Colombia’s minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism

Gómez Amín, who leads the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism (MinCIT), met separately with Toshiro Ino, Japan’s state minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, and with Hiroshi Nanbu, president of Business Planning and Operation at Toyota. The trip is part of President Abelardo de la Espriella’s administration’s push to attract long-term Japanese investment and generate employment.

With Ino, Gómez Amín advanced an agenda to reactivate and conclude the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Colombia and Japan, an accord intended to open Colombian agroindustry to Japanese investment and technology transfer. The two countries began negotiating the EPA in December 2012. 16 of its 18 chapters have been agreed, but two — rules of origin and market access — remain unresolved, and the talks were suspended in 2021, according to Colombia’s embassy in Tokyo. El Tiempo reported that Colombia and Japan reactivated the negotiation in September 2025, when then-President Gustavo Petro and then-Trade Minister Diana Marcela Morales Rojas met their Japanese counterparts on the sidelines of Expo Osaka 2025.

“Japan is looking at Colombia again, and we are ready to capitalize on that confidence,” Gómez Amín said.

The Toyota meeting revisited a relationship of more than five decades. The first Toyota vehicles reached Colombia in 1959, and the company formalized a local distributor in 1967. Sofasa, the assembler that has long built Renault vehicles in Envigado, Antioquia, signed a letter of intent with Toyota in 1989; assembly of Land Cruisers and Hilux pickups began in 1992 and continued for 17 years, before Toyota exited its stake in the plant. In Tokyo, the Colombian government invited Toyota to expand its footprint into the assembly of hybrid and electric vehicles, along with charging infrastructure and the development of local suppliers.

The government describes the push as an effort to draw on Colombia’s talent, strategic location and existing conditions to build a regional production and investment platform. Gómez Amín said the goal is to put Bogotá “on the world map of investments, strengthening relations with a region that for years looked favorably on Colombia,” according to comments carried by El Tiempo.

Japan is the largest Asia-Pacific source of foreign direct investment in Colombia. Japanese investment flows into the country totaled $562.7 million USD between 2010 and 2021, or 32.9 percent of all Asia-Pacific investment Colombia received in that period, ahead of China (21.2 percent) and Australia (14.6 percent), according to the Colombian embassy in Tokyo.

The Tokyo meetings produced no signed agreement and no specific investment commitment from Toyota; both would require further negotiation that the two governments have not scheduled publicly.

Headline photo: Colombia’s Minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism Mauricio Gómez Amín (right) and Japan’s State Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Toshiro Ino, in Tokyo. (Photo courtesy MinCIT)