Fair Draws $2.5 Billion COP in Sales and 83 Business Meetings

The 19th edition of Sabor Barranquilla, a gastronomy fair on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, closed Sunday, August 23, 2026, in Barranquilla with about 20,000 attendees and projected sales of $2.5 billion COP, results Colombia’s national government cited as evidence that the food industry can double as a tool for economic development and tourism.

The four-day fair ran from August 20 to 23 at the Puerta de Oro Centro de Eventos del Caribe and brought together 52 chefs and cooks from different regions of Colombia and the wider Caribbean, according to El Tiempo, who shared recipes, techniques, and stories tied to traditional dishes. A business-matchmaking track produced 83 meetings between 16 professional buyers and companies in the sector.

The Ministerio de Comercio, Industria y Turismo (Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism), commonly known as Mincomercio, took part through its Colombia a la Mesa (Colombia to the Table) strategy, which the ministry describes as a way to turn the country’s regional food products into tourism and business opportunities. This year’s edition was built around the theme “Frutas del Caribe, un mundo asombroso” (“Caribbean Fruits, an Amazing World”), and the ministry brought four representatives from different parts of the food and farming sector to link rural producers, regional products, culture, and cuisine.

Commerce Minister Mauricio Gómez Amín, a lawyer and former senator from Barranquilla whom Abelardo de la Espriella — now Colombia’s president — named to the ministry as president-elect in mid-2026, according to El Tiempo, framed the fair’s results as evidence of a broader economic chain. “With Colombia to the Table we are showing that gastronomy is development. Every dish presented here is a chain that starts with a rural producer and ends in a destination that generates jobs, identity, and pride,” Gómez Amín said.

The government said the fair’s results support its push to strengthen gastronomic tourism, energize local economies, and connect micro, small, and medium-sized rural producers, or MiPymes, with new markets and tourism experiences.

The business-matchmaking track was coordinated with the Fondo Nacional de Turismo (National Tourism Fund), known as Fontur, and the Cámara de Comercio de Barranquilla (Barranquilla Chamber of Commerce), and ran alongside live cooking demonstrations, tastings, and public forums. Fontur general manager María Isabel Campo Cuello, who was named to the post in mid-August 2026, according to El Tiempo, said gastronomy is shifting from a secondary attraction to a primary one for travelers. “Gastronomy is no longer just a complement to the trip — it is the reason for the trip,” Campo Cuello said.

Sabor Barranquilla was created in 2008 by the Cruz Roja Colombiana Seccional Atlántico (the Atlántico chapter of the Colombian Red Cross) and the Atlántico chapter of Fenalco (National Federation of Merchants) to promote Caribbean Colombian and wider-Caribbean cuisine, according to the fair’s website. The fair is organized by Corferias, the Bogotá-based trade fair operator, together with Fenalco Atlántico and the Red Cross chapter, at the Puerta de Oro Centro de Eventos del Caribe venue. This year’s edition featured La Guajira as the guest department and Curaçao as the guest country.

Fenalco Atlántico executive director Yilda Castro said the fair’s reach extends beyond its exhibition halls. “When we talk about gastronomy, we are also talking about opportunities, job creation, and growth for our city and our region,” Castro told El Tiempo.

Fair director Patricia Maestre said organizers are already looking to next year, when Sabor Barranquilla will mark its 20th edition — coinciding with the centennial of the birth of Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez. “Closing this nineteenth edition with thousands of people enjoying, learning, buying, cooking, and discovering the Caribbean fills us with satisfaction, but it also commits us to keep growing,” Maestre told El Tiempo.

Speedtest data show power losses, not shaking, drove the outages

A magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck western Colombia on August 10, 2026, with an epicenter about 20 kilometers from San José del Palmar in the department of Chocó, according to the United States Geological Survey. As of August 25, Colombia’s Unidad Nacional para la Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres (National Disaster Risk Management Unit, UNGRD) counted 331 dead, 4,439 injured and 240 people still missing, with 16 departments and 494 municipalities affected.

Ookla, the company behind the Speedtest and Downdetector network-monitoring platforms, has published an analysis of how Colombia’s mobile networks behaved in the hours and days that followed. Combining Speedtest data, background signal-scanning telemetry and Downdetector’s outage reports with the USGS ShakeMap seismic model, Ookla found that network failures tracked the intensity of the shaking closely, but that the worst of the damage did not arrive during the earthquake itself. It arrived hours later, and in Chocó, more than a day later, as backup batteries at cell sites ran down faster than utility crews could restore electricity.

Outages tracked the shaking, then kept getting worse

Service availability held roughly steady in zones that experienced shaking below 6 on the Modified Mercalli Intensity (MMI) scale, a measure of shaking severity rather than the earthquake’s magnitude, and began deteriorating rapidly above that threshold. In areas that registered MMI 8, severe enough to cause substantial structural damage, 22% of mobile devices lost service in the hours that followed, compared with a normal baseline of about 2%. Ookla’s modeling found that ground-motion intensity accounted for 45% of the variation in service loss, with distance from the epicenter explaining another 34%.

The worst point did not come until four and a half hours after the main shock, when 27% of devices in the most intensely shaken zone were without service. In Chocó, where the earthquake originated beneath San José del Palmar, the share of devices without service kept climbing for a full additional day, reaching 42%.

Power, more than the shaking itself, decided who stayed connected

Colombia’s electrical grid absorbed the earthquake’s second-order damage. Chocó lost essentially all of its electricity supply, while the coffee-growing Eje Cafetero region lost about 80% of demand and Valle del Cauca about 70%, according to Ookla’s analysis of data from grid operator XM. Colombia’s Ministerio de Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones (Ministry of Information and Communications Technologies, MinTIC) separately counted 3,403 base stations out of service, equivalent to 46% of those it evaluated across seven departments; in Risaralda, the figure reached 77%. XM reported that 86% of electricity demand had been restored by the afternoon of the day after the quake, and mobile-network recovery tracked the pace of that grid restoration closely.

Downdetector registered an anomaly in consumer-submitted problem reports just 34 minutes after the rupture. But reports per million residents were roughly 18 times lower in severely shaken zones than in moderately shaken ones, an inversion Ookla attributes to a simple constraint: residents in the hardest-hit areas needed working connectivity to file a report in the first place.

Redundancy mattered more than any single site surviving

Claro reported the largest share of downed sites among the four national networks in the hardest-hit areas, roughly one in five, yet held its peak share of users without service to 10%, the lowest of the three operators for which Ookla reported that figure. Movistar recorded the highest peak user unavailability, at 16%, while Tigo reached 13%. Sites that stayed on the air served a wider area than usual and carried signal roughly 3 decibels weaker on average as a result. Devices on the network then marketed as WOM connected to competitors’ networks at a rate that rose from 8% to 13% of its host-network traffic, and observations of Movistar devices roaming onto Tigo’s network more than quadrupled. Ookla did not report a peak user-unavailability figure for WOM itself.

The roaming shift also reflects a change in market structure that was already in place by the time of the earthquake: two of the four networks Ookla compared were, as of the earthquake, sister brands under a single owner. Millicom International Cellular (Nasdaq: TIGO) completed its purchase of Empresas Públicas de Medellín‘s 50% stake in Tigo-UNE in January for $571 million USD, then closed its purchase of a 67.5% controlling stake in Movistar’s Colombian unit, Colombia Telecomunicaciones, from Telefónica (BME: TEF) the following month for $214 million USD. Millicom completed a second purchase in April, buying the Colombian government’s remaining 32.5% stake in Colombia Telecomunicaciones for approximately $237 million USD to become its sole owner. Claro is operated by América Móvil (NYSE: AMX; BMV: AMX A). The operator Ookla and contemporaneous Colombian press referred to simply as WOM has since been ordered by Colombia’s Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio (Superintendency of Industry and Commerce, SIC) to stop using that brand amid a trademark dispute with its former Chilean licensor, WOM SpA, and now operates as Partners Telecom Colombia.

Demand surged onto a diminished network

Restoring a site to service did not mean restoring its performance. In the hardest-hit departments, latency under load rose from 633 milliseconds to 903 milliseconds and packet loss doubled even as the share of devices without service was falling, a sign that reconnecting users loaded a network that was still running on reduced capacity. In Valle del Cauca, median mobile download speed fell to 8.24 Mbps on the afternoon of the earthquake, compared with 28.99 Mbps on comparable Mondays. Speedtest activity itself fell by about a third on the first day, then more than doubled its normal level on the second day as more users regained enough connectivity to test their own service.

Satellite was the fastest redundancy layer to arrive

In the most affected zones, legacy 2G and 3G connections’ share of cellular activity more than doubled as devices fell back to older networks, and the share of fixed-network speed tests carried over satellite nearly tripled on the day of the earthquake. Starlink offered free satellite internet service in five affected departments — Chocó, Caldas, Valle del Cauca, Risaralda and Quindío — within 30 hours of the earthquake. Ookla recorded roughly a 40% increase in Starlink utilization, with median download speed rising from 86.83 Mbps to 96.81 Mbps despite the additional demand.

Ookla noted that Colombia had no direct-to-cell satellite network available during the emergency; the only device-to-satellite signals it detected came from Entel’s service operating across the border in Peru. Chile, by contrast, has offered a commercial direct-to-cell service between Entel and Starlink since November 2025, letting compatible phones connect straight to satellites without a dedicated terminal when terrestrial coverage fails.

Bogotá’s response, and the gap Ookla says remains

Colombia’s Ministry of Information and Communications Technologies activated a Sectoral Contingency Plan within days of the earthquake, ordering telecommunications operators under Circular 0028 to keep networks available to emergency authorities at no cost, making calls to the 123 emergency line free even for users without an active balance, and granting the Comisión de Regulación de Comunicaciones (Communications Regulation Commission) temporary power to require operators to share surviving infrastructure. The ministry also said it was evaluating a temporary allocation of spectrum for direct-to-device satellite connectivity. “Connectivity can save lives in the places affected by the emergency,” the ministry said in announcing the measures, as reported by Semana.

Ookla’s own conclusion points at a gap that policy has not yet closed: Colombia currently has no minimum backup-power requirement for network sites, a category of rule that resilience research, including work by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, identifies as central to keeping networks alive through an extended electrical failure. Chile offers a comparison of what such a rule looks like once regulators write it down. After a nationwide blackout in February 2025 exposed the same vulnerability, Chile’s telecommunications regulator, the Subsecretaría de Telecomunicaciones (Undersecretariat of Telecommunications, Subtel), published a decree in January 2026 raising the mandatory battery-backup requirement for critical cell sites from four hours to six. Chile had already learned a version of this lesson once before: after the country’s 2010 Maule earthquake, researchers found that only about 2% of the base stations that eventually failed had been damaged directly by the shaking, while most failed later, as backup batteries ran out. Claro and Tigo reported having restored more than 90% of their earthquake-damaged infrastructure in Chocó, Valle del Cauca and the Eje Cafetero by August 14, but Ookla’s data suggest the next earthquake will pose the same question this one did: how long the batteries last after the lights go out.

Ookla and Downdetector have been under joint ownership since June, when technology and consulting firm Accenture (NYSE: ACN) completed a $1.2 billion USD acquisition of the connectivity division of Ziff Davis (Nasdaq: ZD), which had previously owned both platforms.

Grupo Cibest Index Signals Easing Political Risk for Investors

Colombia’s sociopolitical environment is at its most stable point in nearly two years, according to a monthly indicator published by Bancolombia’s macroeconomic research team, part of Grupo Cibest (NYSE: CIB; BVC: CIBEST, PFCIBEST), the financial holding group into which Bancolombia was restructured in 2025. The Sociopolitical Momentum Indicator closed August at 0.50 points, up 0.01 point from July and 0.03 point above its year-to-date average of 0.47, crossing the threshold the bank defines as the boundary between “uncertain” and “fluid” sociopolitical conditions.

The indicator has risen 19.6% since the start of the year, Grupo Cibest’s macroeconomic research team said, despite a slight pullback in early August. The bank described the second half of the year’s evolution as the most favorable on record, meaning the seasonal correction the indicator typically shows at the start of the third quarter has this year been steeper than in recent years. Grupo Cibest said momentum has since stagnated, dating from August 19, but that 2026 could still finish as one of the years with the greatest cumulative improvement in Colombia’s local sociopolitical environment — a change in the indicator that the bank said would rank second only to years such as 2007, which was marked by a positive international perception of Colombia and improving domestic security conditions.

Day-to-day, the indicator has held above the 0.5-point “fluid conditions” threshold continuously since August 14, a level that also matched the month’s closing figure. It peaked at 0.51 points on August 17 — the highest daily reading since December 26, 2024, one of the last days in nearly two years the index spent more than a single day in fluid territory, according to Grupo Cibest. The bank said the past two weeks of data point to what could be the start of a more sustained shift toward favorable conditions.

The reading follows a change of government in Bogotá. Abelardo de la Espriella was inaugurated president on August 7, 2026, El Tiempo reported, after he defeated Pacto Histórico’s Iván Cepeda in a June 21, 2026, runoff, beginning a four-year term that de la Espriella has said will prioritize public security. Grupo Cibest’s report does not attribute August’s reading to any single event.

Grupo Cibest builds the indicator using the Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT), which monitors media outlets worldwide in real time and automatically classifies the tone and intensity of sociopolitical events affecting Colombia. The bank treats each news item as a distinct event, categorizes it as cooperative or conflictive, and weights it for relevance to Colombia; the daily indicator then measures the share of that sociopolitical activity dominated by uncertainty-related events against total interactions, on a scale where 0 represents fully uncertain conditions and 1 represents fully fluid conditions.

The August report was signed by Manuela Bernal, regional analyst; José Luis Mojica, macroeconomic manager; and Laura Clavijo, chief economist and head, all of Bancolombia’s macroeconomic research department.

Headline photo: A mother and her young son share pastries at breakfast. (Photo: Image by OleksandrPidvalnyi from Pixabay)

Miner Partners With Manizales Institutions on Earthquake Recovery

The Unidad Nacional para la Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres (UNGRD, National Disaster Risk Management Unit) reported at least 273 people dead, 3,824 injured and 377 missing as of August 13, 2026, three days after a magnitude-7.4 earthquake struck the department of Chocó near San José del Palmar, according to agency director David Santiago Tamayo. The quake and its aftershocks damaged infrastructure across Chocó, Risaralda, Caldas and Valle del Cauca, affecting roughly 40,750 families. Collective Mining Ltd. (NASDAQ: CNL) (TSX: CNL), whose Guayabales and San Antonio gold, silver, copper and tungsten exploration projects lie roughly 100 kilometers from the epicenter, said none of its personnel were injured and none of its assets were damaged.

Rather than limit its response to its own project sites, the company said it is directing humanitarian support toward Manizales, the Caldas department capital about 80 kilometers from its Supía, Caldas operations, where it already has partnerships with local organizations. Collective Mining said it has been coordinating directly with municipal authorities, local fire departments and business associations to determine where that support is needed most.

On technical matters, the company will work with the Alcaldía de Manizales (Mayor’s Office of Manizales). Its monetary and in-kind contributions will flow through four organizations already active in the recovery: the Asociación Nacional de Empresarios de Colombia (National Business Association of Colombia, or ANDI), which is coordinating reconstruction planning in the hardest-hit areas; the Caldas chapter of the Cruz Roja Colombiana (Colombian Red Cross) and ProCaldas, a public-private development alliance, both focused on health infrastructure; and the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia (National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia), which is targeting local school infrastructure.

Collective Mining traces its roots to Continental Gold Inc., the company that developed Colombia’s Buriticá gold mine before Zijin Mining Group (HKEX: 2899) (SSE: 601899) bought it in an all-cash deal valued at $1.4 billion CAD in enterprise value, a transaction that closed in March 2020. The same management group — now led by Executive Chairman Ari Sussman and President Omar Ossma, who served as Continental Gold’s legal vice president — regrouped around Continental Gold’s old playbook, exploring for gold, silver, copper and tungsten at Guayabales and San Antonio, two adjacent Caldas properties inside a district that already hosts 10 permitted, operating mines. Guayabales’ Apollo system, a large gold-silver-copper-tungsten discovery, is the company’s primary exploration target; recent drilling there has centered on extending the high-grade Ramp Zone and testing a newly exposed oxidized zone to the north.

“In moments like this, a coordinated response is essential to effectively reach affected communities. The support of organizations such as Collective Mining strengthens our ability to address immediate needs and support the recovery efforts underway in Manizales,” said Darío Gómez, president of the board of the Cruz Roja Colombiana’s Caldas chapter. “We appreciate their commitment to working alongside local institutions and organizations as the situation continues to evolve.”

“The safety and wellbeing of our people and communities is our first priority. I have been on the ground in Colombia working directly with our team and local stakeholders to lead our response and understand where assistance is most needed,” said Ossma. “Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the earthquake. We are mobilizing support through organizations that are positioned to direct assistance where it can have the greatest impact. We will continue to support our employees, their families and the broader community as recovery efforts progress.”

Management, insiders, a strategic investor and family and friends of the founding team own 45.2% of Collective Mining’s outstanding shares, according to the company.

Headline photo: Manizales skyline (Pixabay)

Puerto Bahía set a cargo record but its operating income fell

Frontera Energy Corporation (TSX: FEC) (OTCQX: FECCF), the Calgary-based owner of 99.97% of Sociedad Portuaria Puerto Bahía and a 35% stake in Oleoducto de los Llanos Orientales S.A. (ODL), reported on August 14, 2026, adjusted EBITDA of $30.5 million USD for the second quarter of 2026, an 18% increase over the same period a year earlier. It was the company’s first set of results since it completed the sale of its Colombian exploration and production business on June 1, 2026.

Puerto Bahía describes itself as a multipurpose terminal in the Bay of Cartagena, Colombia, with a 20-meter natural draft, 155 hectares for operations and expansion, and separate liquid and dry cargo terminals. Frontera’s release describes ODL as a midstream asset serving the Llanos basin, which it says holds roughly 70% of Colombia’s proven crude oil reserves, and describes Frontera’s portfolio as anchored by the two assets.

Total revenues and other income reached $31.3 million USD, up from $25.5 million USD in the second quarter of 2025 and $26.8 million USD in the first quarter of 2026. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 63%, against 62% a year earlier. Frontera said adjusted EBITDA was driven by performance at the general cargo terminal at Puerto Bahía, which it calls the dry port, and by higher volumes handled at ODL. Chief Executive Officer Orlando Cabrales said Frontera is now working toward first gas in early 2027 at Puerto Bahía’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) regasification project, which the company is developing with Ecopetrol S.A. (BVC: ECOPETROL) (NYSE: EC).

Rolling Cargo Outgrows Barrels at Puerto Bahía

Frontera attributed the increase in port revenue to performance in the general cargo terminal, where roll-on/roll-off volumes grew, and to higher liquids volumes driven by higher throughput from Ecopetrol. The general cargo terminal handled 48,074 roll-on/roll-off units, which Cabrales called a record, a 70% increase over the 28,283 units moved a year earlier and 26% more than the first quarter. April 2026 alone set a single-month record of 17,200 units. General cargo terminal revenue rose 87%, to $8.1 million USD from $4.3 million USD.

Liquids terminal revenue was lower than a year earlier, at $6.5 million USD against $6.8 million USD. Throughput reached 39,889 barrels per day, up 8% from 36,937 in the first quarter but down 25% from 53,280 a year earlier. Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) volumes reached 4,000 tons in the quarter against 1,200 tons in the first quarter; Frontera reports no LPG volumes in the year-earlier quarter. Port revenue totaled $14.6 million USD, up 29% from $11.3 million USD a year earlier, of which $60,000 USD came from Guyana and the rest from the Colombia terminals.

Container traffic declined to 3,277 TEUs, or 20-foot equivalent units, from 3,993 a year earlier. Break bulk volumes, which Frontera reports in tons or cubic meters, came in at 11,199 against 25,216 in the first quarter and 7,538 a year earlier.

The port’s operating income fell 44%, to $1.0 million USD from $1.8 million USD a year earlier. In Puerto Bahía’s own income statement, revenue rose to $14.6 million USD from $11.2 million USD while costs rose to $8.8 million USD from $6.1 million USD, an increase Frontera attributed to the higher general cargo volumes and the start-up of LPG operations. Depreciation, amortization and impairment expense rose to $2.2 million USD from $1.7 million USD, and restructuring, severance and other costs rose to $1.4 million USD from $607,000 USD. Puerto Bahía’s own EBITDA, which Frontera reports separately from adjusted EBITDA, was $4.6 million USD against $4.1 million USD a year earlier.

ODL Throughput Rises as the Tariff Eases

ODL transported an average of 239,333 barrels per day during the quarter, up 1.5% from a year earlier. ODL states on its own website that the system’s effective transport capacity averages 245,000 barrels per day for crude with viscosity up to 1,500 centistokes.

The pipeline, in operation since 2009, runs a 235-kilometer main line from the Rubiales Station in Puerto Gaitán, Meta, to the Monterrey Station in Casanare, plus a 25-kilometer branch from El Viento to Cusiana and a 19-kilometer Caño Sur interconnection, for 279 kilometers in total. ODL says the system transports 30% of the crude oil produced in Colombia.

ODL recorded net income of $47.5 million USD for the quarter, of which $16.6 million USD was attributable to Frontera, and EBITDA of $77.1 million USD against $69.3 million USD a year earlier. The average transportation tariff eased to $4.59 USD per barrel from $4.73 USD a year earlier. In Frontera’s adjusted EBITDA reconciliation, the line representing its 35% participation in ODL’s revenue, operating costs and general and administrative expenses rose to $27.0 million USD from $24.3 million USD.

ODL declared net dividends of $64.7 million USD to Frontera Pipeline Investment AG during 2026, against $52.9 million USD in 2025, plus an additional $5.2 million USD return of capital in the second quarter. Frontera has received $26.8 million USD of that in cash so far this year.

Headline Profit Comes From the Business Frontera Sold

Frontera booked net income attributable to equity holders of $29.0 million USD for the quarter. Continuing operations produced a net loss of $4.0 million USD, or $0.06 USD per diluted share. The profit came from the discontinued exploration and production assets sold to Parex Resources Inc. (TSX: PXT), which contributed $33.0 million USD of income, or $0.47 USD per diluted share. Operating income from continuing operations was positive at $6.1 million USD, after absorbing $7.5 million USD of impairment expense and $4.1 million USD of restructuring, severance and other costs.

Because those assets are now classified as discontinued, Frontera re-presented its 2025 continuing-operations figures. On that basis it reported a $439.2 million USD net loss from continuing operations in the second quarter of 2025, and an operating loss of $427.9 million USD that included a $432.2 million USD impairment charge and $9.4 million USD of restructuring, severance and other costs.

Frontera closed the quarter with $56.3 million USD in cash and equivalents, $170.5 million USD in total debt and lease liabilities, and net debt of $114.2 million USD. Net debt to trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA fell to 0.98 times from 1.33 times at the end of March 2026. Trailing 12-month infrastructure distributable cash flow was $78.8 million USD, up from $51.4 million USD a quarter earlier, a difference driven by the timing of ODL distribution payments between periods, the company said.

On June 1, 2026, Frontera said its infrastructure business was expected to generate $110 million USD to $120 million USD of adjusted EBITDA in 2026, alongside $80 million USD to $85 million USD of distributable free cash flow. First-half adjusted EBITDA was $59.0 million USD.

Frontera Targets First Gas in Early 2027

Puerto Bahía has signed a take-or-pay agreement with Ecopetrol covering a seven-year service term that begins when operations start, and has secured floating storage and regasification capacity from US-based Excelerate Energy, Inc. (NYSE: EE). LNG Prime reported on August 6, 2026, that Excelerate had confirmed a seven-year charter with a Frontera subsidiary for a floating storage and regasification unit at an LNG import terminal under development in Colombia.

Ecopetrol announced on May 25, 2026, that it and Sociedad Portuaria Puerto Bahía were entering the execution phase after the Agencia Nacional de Infraestructura (National Infrastructure Agency, ANI) issued a favorable opinion on a non-substantial modification to the port concession and the Autoridad Nacional de Licencias Ambientales (National Environmental Licensing Authority, ANLA) approved a minor environmental change. In that announcement, Ecopetrol said the work would ensure entry into operation in December 2026, and that the company would then be able to contribute an initial supply of up to 300 GBTUD, or gigaBTU per day, to Colombia’s gas balance.

Bayron Triana, then Ecopetrol’s vice president of energies for the transition, said in that announcement, translated from Spanish:

With these port and environmental approvals fully enabling the infrastructure, we are beginning the execution phase of a project that is strategic for the country, aimed at strengthening energy security and the reliability of natural gas supply in Colombia, particularly during the most critical stage of the El Niño phenomenon.

Triana, whose title El Tiempo gives as executive vice president of energies for the transition, resigned voluntarily effective July 31, 2026, the newspaper reported. Ernesto Alfonso Gómez, general manager of refining, was to take over the vice presidency on an acting basis on August 1, 2026, until a permanent appointment is made, El Tiempo reported.

Valora Analitik reported the same day that the floating unit had not yet been contracted and might not arrive until late 2026 or during 2027, that imported gas would begin entering the system after December 2026 rather than before it, and that Puerto Bahía would be Colombia’s second regasification plant after Sociedad Portuaria El Cayao (SPEC), a subsidiary of Promigas (BVC: PROMIGAS).

Colombia’s proven natural gas reserves stood at 1,717 billion cubic feet at the end of 2025, a 54% decline from 2018, with a reserves-to-production ratio of 5.9 years and a negative reserve replacement rate, according to the Agencia Nacional de Hidrocarburos (National Hydrocarbons Agency, ANH) reserves report reviewed in Finance Colombia’s July 2026 analysis of the reserves collapse.

What the Parex Sale Returned to Shareholders

Parex closed its purchase of Frontera International Holdings B.V. on June 1, 2026. The subsidiary held the Colombian exploration and production assets, a reverse osmosis water treatment facility and a palm oil plantation. Aggregate consideration was $750 million USD, comprising $500 million USD in upfront cash, $225 million USD of assumed net debt and a $25 million USD payment contingent on an extension of the Quifa contract with Ecopetrol. Shareholders approved the arrangement on April 30, 2026, as Finance Colombia reported in May 2026.

Frontera distributed $8.34 CAD per share, roughly $590 million CAD or $430 million USD, to holders of record on June 12, 2026, paid June 23, 2026. It retained $64 million USD, allocating $25 million USD to reducing debt and other liabilities and $39 million USD to growth projects at Puerto Bahía. Chairman Gabriel de Alba said the outcome “reflects a multi-year effort to simplify the Company, crystallize value and establish a stronger foundation for its next phase.”

Management is scheduled to discuss the results with analysts and investors on a conference call on August 18, 2026, at 9 a.m. Eastern time.

Headline photo: A roll-on/roll-off vehicle carrier is loaded at Puerto Bahía’s general cargo terminal in Cartagena. (Photo courtesy Puerto Bahía)

Zancudo revenue hits $8.6 million USD in the first half of 2026

Denarius Metals Corp. (Cboe CA: DMET) (OTCQX: DNRSF), the Canadian junior with gold and polymetallic projects in Colombia and Spain, reported on July 29 that it shipped 3,907 tons of mined material from its Zancudo Project in Antioquia during the second quarter of 2026, a 67% increase over the first quarter, generating revenue of $5.1 million USD. First-half revenue reached $8.6 million USD, against $1.7 million USD for all of fiscal 2025, its first partial year of shipments.

Head grades averaged 11.3 grams per ton of gold and 217.1 grams per ton of silver in the second quarter, against 11.5 and 269.3 in the first. Contained metal totaled 1,416 ounces of gold and 27,265 ounces of silver for the quarter, and 2,279 ounces and 47,502 ounces for the half.

“We continue to advance mine development and plant construction activities toward our objective of producing gold-silver concentrates by the fourth quarter of this year.” – Serafino Iacono, executive chairman, Denarius Metals

Because the material is sold raw rather than as concentrate, Denarius is paid for far less than it digs out. Payable metal for the quarter was 970 ounces of gold and 9,706 ounces of silver — 68.5% and 35.6% of contained metal.

Zancudo early production	Fiscal 2025	Q1 2026	Q2 2026	H1 2026
Tons mined and delivered	2,092	2,337	3,907	6,244
Gold grade (g/t)	7.9	11.5	11.3	11.4
Gold contained (ounces)	532	863	1,416	2,279
Silver grade (g/t)	222.7	269.3	217.1	236.6
Silver contained (ounces)	14,977	20,237	27,265	47,502
Payable gold (ounces)	333	593	970	1,563
Payable silver (ounces)	5,749	7,839	9,706	17,545
Total revenue ($ millions USD)	1.7	3.5	5.1	8.6

Why the Payability Gap Matters

Denarius began mining at Zancudo in the second quarter of 2025, delivering its first shipment that June. The current phase, which the company calls “early production,” is artisanal mining in already-accessible parts of the mine and runs through the third quarter of 2026 while development opens new fronts for conventional, semi-mechanized work. Mined material is shipped to a local port and sold to Trafigura under a long-term offtake.

Trafigura pays for 30% to 70% of the gold and 20% to 40% of the silver in each shipment, depending on grade, because the trader absorbs the cost of making the material saleable. Denarius says those rates rise to 86% to 90% for gold and 35% to 45% for silver once it ships concentrate from its own plant — a substantial step up on gold from the 68.5% recorded in the second quarter, though second-quarter silver payability of 35.6% already sits at the bottom of the concentrate band.

A District Worked Since 1793

Zancudo covers 1,054 hectares in the municipality of Titiribí, about 30 kilometers southwest of Medellín in the Cauca Belt, and includes the historic Independencia mine. Gold was found there in 1746 and mined from 1793 across 58 workings; the Sociedad de Zancudo held the ground for a century from 1848, and the mine closed in 1945. Denarius estimates historic district production between 1793 and 2006 at 1.4 million to 2 million gold-equivalent ounces. The project lies about 190 kilometers from the port of Buenaventura; a four-kilometer bypass road to the Medellín highway is under construction.

Gran Colombia Gold — a predecessor of Aris Mining (TSX/NYSE: ARIS) — acquired Zancudo in 2010 and optioned it to IAMGOLD Corporation (TSX: IMG; NYSE: IAG) in 2017. Denarius bought the rights in 2021 and took full ownership in 2022 after IAMGOLD declined to complete its earn-in.

A resource estimate effective October 31, 2025, put indicated resources at 979,000 tons grading 6.9 grams per ton gold and 84 grams per ton silver, with inferred resources of 4.6 million tons at 5.6 and 84 grams per ton. A preliminary economic assessment released on March 30, 2026, sketched an 11-year mine life generating $2 billion USD from roughly 466,000 payable ounces of gold and 2.2 million payable ounces of silver, assuming $4,000 USD per ounce of gold and $50 USD per ounce of silver. It draws on inferred resources that cannot be classified as reserves.

What the New Plant Changes

Denarius received its industrial facility permit from Corantioquia (Autonomous Regional Corporation of Central Antioquia), the regional environmental authority, in October 2025, clearing the way to build a 1,000-ton-per-day flotation plant. “We continue to increase our daily average mining rates during the early production phase at our Zancudo Project,” Executive Chairman Serafino Iacono said.

Iacono put first concentrate in the fourth quarter of 2026, a target the company’s own project page also carries. The boilerplate appended to the July 29 release still shows a third-quarter date. Denarius is also drilling about 15,000 meters at Zancudo this year.

The ramp-up coincides with high gold prices. Aris Mining sold gold at an average realized price of about $4,445 USD per ounce in the second quarter, according to the half-year results it reported for its Segovia and Marmato mines. Conditions are harder sector-wide; miners met this year over an approximately 8% contraction in mining GDP and a shift toward asset-light models.

Outside Colombia, Denarius holds 21.8% of Rio Narcea Recursos and operates that company’s Aguablanca nickel-copper project in Extremadura, Spain, an EU-designated Strategic Project. It wholly owns the Lomero and Toral deposits, also in Spain, and in early 2026 formed a joint venture with Saudi-based ProGrowth Ltd. Company, covering processing and smelting arrangements in Saudi Arabia.

Norfund and Augment Infrastructure Also Backed the Erco Round

Colombian solar developer Erco Energía has closed a Series C capital increase of $129 million USD. Next Utility Ventures — a private equity fund inside the Ventures EPM program of Medellín utility Empresas Públicas de Medellín (EPM), and managed by Spanish investment firm Axon Partners Group (BME Growth: APG) — co-led the round.

EPM announced its role in a bulletin dated August 14, 2026, after what it described as several months of negotiation. The utility did not disclose the size of the round or its own contribution. The $129 million USD figure was reported the previous day by El Colombiano and Valora Analitik, which placed the round among the largest equity raises announced by a Colombian company in 2026, and Axon confirmed it in an announcement published the same day as EPM’s bulletin.

El Colombiano reported that four funds took part: Next Utility Ventures, Augment Infrastructure, Norfund and Endeavor Catalyst, the co-investment fund of Endeavor. Augment Infrastructure, which El Colombiano reported is US-based, calls itself a founder-led manager investing in sustainable infrastructure, mostly in emerging markets, across power, water and sanitation, telecom infrastructure and transport. Norfund identifies itself as the Norwegian Investment Fund for Developing Countries and is owned and funded by the Norwegian government. Axon’s announcement names Augment Infrastructure and Norfund but does not mention Endeavor Catalyst, and EPM’s bulletin names no investor beyond Next Utility Ventures and Axon.

Valora Analitik reported that the proceeds are earmarked for developing energy projects in several regions of Colombia. El Colombiano reported that those projects will expand distributed generation capacity — solar power produced close to where it is consumed, on the roofs of homes, businesses and industrial plants — and that in a system heavily dependent on hydroelectricity, added solar reduces the risk when reservoir levels fall.

Luis Fernando Gómez, finance director at Erco Energía, said in remarks reported by Valora Analitik that the operation reaffirms the company’s purpose of being “a vehicle of growth and energy prosperity for Colombia, a country with enormous potential in energy,” and that the new capital will let Erco “continue building infrastructure, sustainability and growth for the nation and for Colombians.”

The Investors’ History With Erco

EPM’s involvement in Erco dates to 2016, when Ventures EPM made its first investment during the company’s Series A. EPM says it has since supplied capital and worked to strengthen the developer’s technical and commercial capabilities. Ventures EPM is the corporate venture capital arm of Grupo EPM and invests in startups and growth-stage companies tied to the energy transition, the circular economy and smart territories; EPM puts its active portfolio at 26 companies.

Erco and EPM have also worked together since 2018 on solar solutions for homes, industry and retail businesses across Colombia. EPM puts that joint portfolio — completed projects, projects under construction and installations tied to long-term energy sales contracts — at close to 64 MWp.

Sebastián Méndez Agudelo, corporate director of acquisitions, mergers and divestitures at Grupo EPM, said the capital increase “is of vital importance because it demonstrates that companies supporting the energy transition can be created and consolidated in Colombia. It also shows the value of alliances between emerging companies and large corporations to accelerate innovation, drive business development and give form to a shared vision of sustainable, long-term growth for the transformation of the country’s business fabric.”

Axon runs an investment business alongside a strategic consulting practice and has been listed on BME Growth, the Spanish market for growth companies, since 2022. Axon says it has backed Erco since the company’s Series B. Nicolás Ríos, a partner at the firm and head of its sustainability and climate tech strategy for Latin America, said the transaction “confirms that climate-tech and the energy transition have become a mature investment thesis in Latin America, one capable of delivering returns alongside real impact.”

What Erco Does

Erco was founded in Medellín in 2011. It builds, owns and runs renewable generation and storage assets under an independent power producer model, and its business also covers digital trading of clean electricity, energy efficiency, electric mobility, electrification and asset management. Axon puts Erco’s record at more than 2,600 projects built and installed capacity above 450 MWp, most of it in Colombia; Erco’s own website cites more than 4,000 projects executed and more than 320 MWp installed or under construction.

The Andes Project

Erco and EPM are jointly developing Andes, a roughly 400 MWp solar plant, with an unnamed European investor. When EPM announced the agreement on December 3, 2025, it put the construction cost at up to $400 million USD, said the capacity would go to Colombia’s Sistema Interconectado Nacional (National Interconnected System), and said a solar project of that size can supply a city of about 364,000 people. Under the structure, EPM commits to a long-term power purchase agreement and, once technical milestones and applicable regulatory and financial conditions are met, will fund the acquisition of a majority stake; Erco and the European investor are to hold minority positions over the long term.

In the December 2025 announcement, EPM General Manager John Maya Salazar said Colombia “has a need for new generation projects to close the gap that exists today between supply and demand and in that way contribute to mitigating the risk of a blackout, in the face of a possible El Niño phenomenon in the coming years.”

Medellín gets 24% of LATAM’s Colombian seats and 419 staff

LATAM Airlines Colombia said on September 2, 2026, that it has strengthened its Medellín operation for the remainder of the year across passenger flying, maintenance, cargo, and customer service, in a city the airline describes as its second-largest base in the country. The passenger schedule accounts for 245,554 monthly seats, roughly 24% of the 1,018,234 monthly seats the carrier offers across Colombia.

Headcount in the city reached 419 in September, an increase of 51%, spread across operations, on-board service, maintenance, and airport functions. Of that total, the airline said 143 people are assigned to passenger and cargo operations, with the growth concentrated in cabin crew and pilots based in Medellín. In an interview with El Colombiano, Erika Zarante, chief executive of LATAM Airlines Colombia, put the additions at 95 cabin crew and 48 flight-deck crew. The newspaper reported that the crew base allows employees from Antioquia who had been working out of Bogotá to return to the region.

The airline also set daily overnight parking for eight aircraft at José María Córdova International Airport in Rionegro, and said the base can now perform inspection and intervention work on engines, landing gear, and fuselages. The airline said the capability improves fleet availability and service reliability.

In May 2025, Vice Minister of Infrastructure Liliana María Ospina told the Comisión Sexta (Sixth Commission) of the Colombian Senate that only the first stage of the airport’s master plan had been funded at that point, and that the second stage, which contains a second runway and a new terminal, fell outside the administration’s budget planning. Finance Colombia reported at the time that the terminal had handled 12.5 million passengers and 129,000 tons of cargo over the preceding year.

Zarante told El Colombiano that the airport’s planned expansion to 17 million passengers opens room for airlines to keep growing in the city, but that airport infrastructure has to work as a network anchored on Bogotá, where LATAM is pressing for slot monitoring at El Dorado International Airport and views the Dorado Max project as a source of additional capacity over the medium and long term. She said LATAM is willing to invest and bring more aircraft to Colombia as that capacity opens.

On the cargo side, the group’s freight arm, LATAM Cargo, operates seven weekly freighter frequencies between Medellín and Miami using Boeing (NYSE: BA) 767 aircraft, which the airline said play a strategic role in exports from Antioquia’s flower-growing sector. At a half-year briefing in July, reported by Colombian aviation outlet volavi, the airline said it moved 75,000 tons of cargo in Colombia during the first six months of 2026, held the lead in air freight exports of flowers, and widened its cargo mix to include fruit, tilapia, pharmaceutical freight, e-commerce, and high-value goods.

Two group-wide support functions also sit in the metropolitan area. The airline said Medellín supplies uniforms for its employees worldwide and hosts the largest business process outsourcing and contact center operation in the LATAM group’s regional network, staffed by 700 agents working exclusively on the airline’s account. That center is run by AlmaExperience Colombia, which operates offices in Bogotá and in Sabaneta, in the Medellín metropolitan area, and reports more than 3,500 employees nationwide. AlmaExperience Colombia, formerly Almacontact, belongs to the Almaviva group of Italy.

The passenger network from Medellín covers 162 weekly frequencies to seven destinations, six of them domestic. Bogotá accounts for 100 weekly flights, followed by Cali and Barranquilla at 14 each, San Andrés at 13, and Pereira, Montería, and Lima at seven each. Lima, the only international route in the schedule, connects Medellín to the wider network of LATAM Airlines Group (NYSE: LTM) through Peru. Zarante told El Colombiano that the Bogotá-Medellín route has grown about 4% to 5% and ranks third by number of frequencies across the entire LATAM group, and that the airline’s near-term priority is consolidating existing routes rather than launching new ones.

Measured in available seat kilometers (ASKs), the airline projects 77 million ASKs from Medellín against 512 million ASKs for its Colombian operation as a whole, and describes the plan as representing 8% growth over 2025. The airline highlighted three routes: Barranquilla-Medellín, where seats rise 64%; San Andrés-Medellín, up 63%; and Bogotá-Medellín, up 10%. Bogotá-Medellín was already the busiest pair in the carrier’s domestic network in the first half of 2026, carrying 754,925 passengers, according to figures volavi reported from the group’s second-quarter results.

At the July briefing the airline said it carried more than 5 million passengers on domestic and international flights to and from Colombia between January and June, holding its position as the second operator in the domestic market. It told trade outlet Reportur in July 2026 that it operates 29 aircraft in the country and is targeting a share close to 30% of the Colombian air market, against the 26% of seat capacity its chief executive cited for 2025.

Parent company LATAM Airlines Group reported net income of $125 million USD for the second quarter of 2026 on revenue of $4.18 billion USD, a 28% increase over the same quarter of 2025, with an adjusted operating margin of 5.4% and aircraft fuel costs up 93.1% year over year, according to the group’s results release dated August 4, 2026. The group and Delta Air Lines (NYSE: DAL) agreed to a joint venture in 2020, and the Colombian civil aviation authority, Aeronáutica Civil (Civil Aeronautics), known as Aerocivil, approved it in May 2021.

Zarante said the city’s role in the group extends past its position in the route map. “Medellín is much more than a relevant destination within our network: it is a strategic platform for LATAM’s growth in Colombia and for the Group in the region,” she said. “Our commitment to Antioquia combines connectivity, employment, cargo, customer service, and maintenance, with a long-term vision that seeks to drive stronger connectivity, a more efficient operation, and a business model that integrates local capabilities with global opportunities.”

Zarante took the chief executive role on January 1, 2025, succeeding Santiago Álvarez Matamoros. La República reported at the time of her appointment that she had spent 23 years in the aviation sector and had been leading the airline’s legal department.

Headline photo: Erika Zarante, CEO of LATAM Airlines Colombia, beside the landing gear of a LATAM aircraft. (Photo courtesy LATAM Airlines Colombia)

Platforms face weekly checks after HRW counts 1,500 minors recruited

Colombia’s Ministerio de Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones (Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications, or MinTIC) will create a specialized working group to monitor what social media platforms are doing to detect and remove content that criminal structures use to recruit minors, the ministry announced on August 28, 2026. The group will meet weekly to check whether the platforms and other digital-industry actors are meeting the commitments they have made.

Minister Alexandra Falla Zerrate made the announcement after meeting with representatives of the Asociación Latinoamericana de Internet (Latin American Internet Association, or Alai), a Montevideo-based industry association whose members include Meta (NASDAQ: META), TikTok, Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), X and MercadoLibre (NASDAQ: MELI). According to the ministry, the meeting examined the growth of the problem and the way criminal structures use digital platforms to approach children and adolescents.

The announcement came four days after Human Rights Watch published a 124-page report on the recruitment of minors by armed groups in Colombia. Based on its analysis of data from the Defensoría del Pueblo (Ombudsman’s Office), the organization counted at least 1,500 children and adolescents recruited since 2021, with a sharp rise in cases since 2023, and found that dissident factions of the demobilized FARC were behind the large majority of reported cases, and that more than half of all reported cases were in the department of Cauca. The report’s researchers reviewed more than 70 accounts and 40 posts on platforms including Facebook and TikTok that glorified membership in armed groups or invited users to join them, and concluded that the platforms had not effectively detected or removed that content and that in some cases their algorithms appeared to promote it.

“Armed groups in Colombia are recruiting children with impunity, as protection systems are failing, and social media platforms have become a more effective recruiting ground,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, when the report was released.

Separately, the Defensoría del Pueblo registered 97 cases of forced recruitment of minors between January 1 and July 31, 2026, according to El Espectador, after 684 cases in all of 2024 and 428 in 2025. The agency cautioned that the lower reported figure does not necessarily mean recruitment has fallen, since many victims and families do not report out of fear, distrust of institutions or normalization of the violence.

Five measures

The ministry listed five measures coming out of the meeting. The first is the working group itself, which will provide permanent follow-up on the actions taken by platforms and other ecosystem actors and verify compliance with the commitments made to prevent recruitment.

The second concerns detection technology. Participants discussed the role of artificial intelligence in identifying and filtering recruitment-related content and concluded that, while automated tools catch and remove a significant share of posts, they must be complemented by interdisciplinary human review to catch material that slips past the filters. Falla urged the digital-industry participants to build teams of people who understand Colombian forms of communication, whether visual, verbal or written, so that they can recognize this type of messaging and act on it immediately.

The third measure is a push to stop the content from being published in the first place rather than removing it after the fact. Falla said she was concerned about the circulation of content that can be used to lure or induce minors into recruitment and called for technological tools, including properly programmed detection algorithms, that identify and block such posts before they go up.

The fourth addresses the share of content that evades detection. Raúl Echeberría, Alai’s executive director, told the meeting that platforms currently remove more than 90% of the identified content related to the problem. Falla responded that the challenge is to keep cutting the percentage that gets past detection mechanisms and to reach 100% neutralization of that content.

The fifth measure is coordination. The ministry and the industry representatives agreed that confronting the online recruitment of minors requires joint action by the authorities, the technology platforms, other digital-ecosystem actors and families.

What the platforms have said

In written responses to Human Rights Watch that were published as annexes to the report, both Meta and ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, said their policies prohibit content that promotes, supports or champions violent organizations, including Colombian armed groups, and that they had removed the profiles the organization flagged. According to El Tiempo, Meta reported removing 16 Facebook profiles and TikTok reported removing 35 profiles and their associated content. TikTok also told the organization that between January and March 2026 it removed 99.4% of content in Colombia that violated its policy on violent organizations and individuals before it was reported, that it blocks search terms associated with criminal organizations, and that users under 16 cannot access direct messages or group chats where those features are available.

Human Rights Watch’s own conclusion was that the platforms have not been able to effectively detect and prevent the spread of this content. According to El Tiempo, the full report recommends that the platforms establish specific reporting channels adapted to children in Spanish and in relevant indigenous languages, preserve evidence when content is removed, and publicly report on their compliance with child-safety obligations under international standards and Colombian law.

Falla, a social communications graduate of the Universidad Externado de Colombia with more than three decades in the audiovisual and public television sector, took office with the administration of President Abelardo de la Espriella, which was inaugurated on August 7, 2026. The ministry said that for Falla the protection of minors is a priority issue. The announcement did not specify who will sit on the working group or whether the platforms’ commitments will be made public.

Headline photo: Minister Alexandra Falla Zerrate with representatives of the Asociación Latinoamericana de Internet and the digital industry at the ministry. (Photo courtesy MinTIC)

Fontur to prioritize quake-hit regions as guilds back new metrics

Colombia’s tourism trade associations have ratified that the sector’s impact will be measured on indicators beyond visitor volume, following a meeting between Vice Minister of Tourism Julián Franco Restrepo and representatives of the industry guilds, the Ministerio de Comercio, Industria y Turismo (Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism, MinCIT) announced on September 1, 2026.

According to the ministry, the guilds ratified that the sector’s performance will be judged on effective visitor spending, socioeconomic opportunities in the regions, sustainability, the positioning of Colombian gastronomy, and tourist security, rather than on visitor volume alone. Among the strategic themes discussed, the ministry highlighted the goal of establishing tourism as a cross-cutting policy for regional growth and formal job creation.

The meeting was convened on the instruction of Minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism Mauricio Gómez Amín, a Barranquilla attorney and former senator who, according to El Tiempo, was named to the portfolio in July by then President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella. The ministry described the session as a first-hand review of what is working in each segment of the industry, the priority needs identified, and the route the government intends to follow for the sector. It did not publish a list of the associations that attended.

“We want tourism to be the great engine of economic and social development for the country. This listening exercise allows us to chart a clear, shared route toward building a stronger, more coordinated industry with a real vision of the future,” said Franco Restrepo.

The Fondo Nacional de Turismo (National Tourism Fund, Fontur), the ministry’s financing and promotion arm, committed at the meeting to put its technical, promotional, and infrastructure-investment capacity behind the priorities the guilds identified. The ministry said Fontur will prioritize the recovery of the departments affected by the August 10 earthquake while continuing development projects and investment in the rest of the country. The ministry did not announce specific measures, funding amounts, or a timeline.

The magnitude 7.4 earthquake, with its epicenter near San José del Palmar in Chocó, struck western and southwestern Colombia on August 10, 2026, and initial assessments reported 472 municipalities affected. According to an August 18 report from the Unidad Nacional para la Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres (National Unit for Disaster Risk Management, UNGRD) cited by Infobae Colombia, the earthquake left 304 dead, 4,548 injured, 426 missing, and 292,043 people affected, figures the UNGRD said could change as field verification continued. Infobae, citing the Asociación Colombiana de Ciudades Capitales (Colombian Association of Capital Cities, Asocapitales), reported that Cali and Pereira recorded the heaviest loss of life and infrastructure collapses among the capital cities.

Pereira’s Matecaña International Airport, which Infobae reported was operating under restrictions at the time, has since reopened gradually. According to MinCIT, the airport received approval from the Aeronáutica Civil (Civil Aeronautics, Aerocivil) on August 22 and was handling an average of 18 flights a day with four airlines as of August 29, with full capacity expected within an estimated two months.

In an interview with Valora Analitik published August 28, María Isabel Campo, general manager of Fontur, said the fund will concentrate over the coming months on reconstruction in five departments hit by the earthquake: Quindío, Risaralda, Valle del Cauca, Chocó, and Caldas. She said Fontur has an emergency line but that it was not set up in anticipation of a tragedy like the earthquake, and that the fund is reviewing its competitiveness and infrastructure lines to finance the reconstruction of damaged tourism infrastructure. Campo also said the fund would work with the Servicio Nacional de Aprendizaje (National Learning Service, SENA) and the private sector on tourism training, and would help smaller municipalities structure projects.

At least one guild has already put specific requests to the government. At the 30th National Congress of Travel and Tourism Agencies in Barranquilla, which closed on August 28, the Asociación Colombiana de Agencias de Viajes y Turismo (Colombian Association of Travel and Tourism Agencies, Anato) presented proposals based on an assessment of its member agencies and other operators in Chocó, Valle del Cauca, Risaralda, Quindío, and Caldas. According to El Espectador, the proposals include subsidies to preserve jobs, a reduction of the value-added tax on air tickets, lodging, and tour packages, special credit lines, tax relief, and more flexible commercial penalties.

Speaking at the same congress on August 27, Franco Restrepo outlined what he called four engines for the sector: confidence, covering security, confidence in service, fair pricing, and institutional trust; experiences, built around tourism corridors and product design; a tourism intelligence center to support data-based decisions; and scale in both infrastructure and promotion. According to El País of Cali, the vice minister told the congress that the main indicators for travel agencies fell in the first half of 2026, and that the country’s roughly 18,000 agencies represent 15% of registered tourism providers and more than 30,000 jobs.

Franco Restrepo served for nine years as secretary of tourism for the department of Valle del Cauca before his appointment to the vice ministry, according to El País. The ministry said the joint work among MinCIT, Fontur, and the guilds is meant to lead to concrete actions to strengthen the sector’s development.

Headline photo: Tourism guild representatives and MinCIT officials after the September 1, 2026 meeting. (Photo courtesy MinCIT / Lincoln Acevedo)