Colombian president heads Civets nations to drum up trade with Britain

Investors are increasingly interested in the Civets, an economic bloc of young emerging nations regarded as 'the new Brics'.

When President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia begins an official visit to Britain tomorrow he will be here as the leader of one of the Civets nations a term coined by the Economist Intelligence Unit in 2.009 to refer to the group of emerging economic nations ranked second in importance to the Bric countries. 

The Civets are made up of Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa though the latter have also attached themselves to the end of the Bric acronym.

The mark of a Civets nation is a diverse economy and a young, growing population. 

Michael Geoghegan, chief executive of HSBC referred to these countries as "the new Brics". Geoghegan first used the term publicly during a speech to the Hong Kong chamber of commerce last year when he said "these emerging markets will grow three times as fast as developed countries this year".

The Economist Intelligence Unit predicts growth rates of 4.9% for Civets countries over the next 20 years compared with 1.8% for G7 countries. 

To signal their arrival as potentially lucrative markets, HSBC launched the first asset management fund directed at these countries this year. 

So, a year after Brazil, Russia, India and China were dubbed the Bric countries, there's a new acronym on the block.

It is in this context that President Santos comes to Britain to rebrand the near failed state of 10 years ago as one of the shiniest emergent economic powers in Latin America.

The statistics certainly bear this out. GDP has doubled in the last 10 years, a decade that has seen marked improvements in the country's security following the success of Plan Colombia in routing most, if not all, the narcotics and political guerrillas to the remotest parts of the country.

The transformation is probably most marked in Medellín. 

Once synonymous with drug cartels and routinely described as the most violent city in the world 20 years ago, it is now one of the most important economic centres in the reborn Colombia, where a new generation of industrialists and entrepreneurs is bringing change to a city scarred by terror for so long.

This is the story that Santos will be coming to tell, as he revealed to the Observer in a recent interview in Bogotá. 

"Part of my foreign policy objective is to enlarge and in a way change the traditional agenda that Colombia has had for years or decades. 

Our agenda was drug-trafficking, human rights violations, kidnappings and all the bad press we had for many, many years.

"But we are living a new reality and part of my responsibility is to have this new reality known by the world. 

For example in my visit I'm going to put a tremendous emphasis on education, transfer of technology, economic themes in general, and violence and drug-trafficking are going to be marginal. 

This is a major change for us."

All the basic indices are moving in the right direction, and inward investment is starting to return after years of upheaval. 

In particular American investors have flooded back in such numbers that questions are being raised as to whether this inward investment might hamper homegrown entrepreneurs and producers.

The Colombian economy is a highly diverse one, but two of its sectors in particular have benefited most from the success of Plan Colombia in clearing large tracts of the country of narcotics or terrorist guerrillas. 

Large areas of land have opened up for agriculture and mineral extraction after years of being off limits. 

As Santos says: "There's a tremendous potential in the agri-business. 

We have almost half of Colombian land as it was in the wild west in the United States before it was conquered."

The opportunities for UK investment go beyond agriculture, says Santos. 

"We have the need to upgrade our infrastructure and we need good investment not only in roads but also in ports, in airports and in computer technology, broadband, in all those areas we need investment and we need technology and the UK has it.

"My message is a very simple one. Colombia is considered a rising star. We are doing very well economically, we are almost 50 million consumers. 

We need investment. We need technology.

"Colombia has many of the things the UK needs and the UK has many of the things that Colombia needs and so there is a tremendous opportunity. 

We are playing an important role in the region, a region which is also looked at as a region with tremendous future.

"We have energy, we have biodiversity, we have water, we have the possibility of food production, we have a lot of mineral resources. 

So there's a tremendous potential and I want to attract British investors and British businessmen because I think it would be a win-win situation."

It is a mark of the visit's importance that while Santos will spend most of his time selling his country to the British business community, he will also hold meetings with all the main political leaders and be received by the Queen. 

For Santos this is principally a professional visit but London is also a place that is dear to his heart. 

He is no stranger to the city: he lived there for many years while studying at the London School of Economics and working as chief of the Colombian delegation at the International Coffee Executive.

One of the big challenges for the country will be to build an infrastructure that can exploit its growth potential. 

Anyone who has journeyed outside the main Colombian routes will testify to how basic some of the roads are. 

This is a country with significant natural resources and nine major rivers but these natural gifts also present enormous challenges, not least how best to navigate the three Andean mountain ranges that run almost the length of the heavily populated western regions.

As the Economist noted last month, "Across the country the 'monumental backwardness' of Colombia's transport network  as Juan Martin, president of the Colombian Infrastructure Chamber, puts it is perhaps the biggest obstacle to economic growth."

And that is where British business may have a role to play. 

Santos has just announced a 10-year, £30bn investment plan to upgrade Colombia's infrastructure. 

Santos is looking for private partners to help realise this ambitious project – he has already announced plans to open tenders for £1.9bn worth of projects by the end of the year. 

It is these kinds of investment opportunities that Santos will be selling to the City of London this week.

The benefits of economic growth are plain enough for any country, but for Colombia it is also seen as a necessary step in escaping the kind of inequality and social injustice that sparked the Farc guerilla movement into life in the mid 1.960s and which has plagued the development of the country ever since.

Santos believes the benefits of improved economic performance for Colombia will be measured in much more than rising GDP or falling unemployment. 

"We're doing very well economically. 

We want to have the best practices in terms of education, in terms of health, in terms of fighting against corruption, but at the same time we have tremendous inequalities and we have extreme poverty and lots of people in Colombia are poor. 

And if we don't solve that problem the rest will be difficult to sustain."