Colombia Defence and Security Report Q3 2009

As mentioned in our previous report, the security situation in Colombia has improved with the decline in fortunes of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC). Political impetus for a continued decline in FARC power comes from President Álvaro Uribe who is close to achieving his goal of seeking a third term in office next year. The Senate has passed a bill that paves the way for a referendum on his being allowed to stand. Colombia has been a major importer of weapons systems for several years, with an arsenal that has in recent years been greatly strengthened by American military and financial aid, the latter funding the purchase of several fixed-wing aircraft and armed helicopters, including F-4 Phantoms, and Bell UH-1H and Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters. These helicopters have been armed with FLIR (Forward- Looking Infra-Red) sensors as well as GAU-19 7.62mm mini-guns and 7.62mm M-60 machine guns. On the economic front, headline inflation has continued to fall. It declined 5.72% year-on-year in March, for the sixth month in a row. We continue to expect that slower domestic economic activity and relatively subdued global commodity prices will bring CPI down to our end-2009 target of 3.5%. Other economic data has become progressively worse, to the extent that even the finance ministry is now considering a downgrade to its growth estimate. We continue to be sceptical as to the ability of the government’s fiscal coffers to accommodate a hefty expansion in public expenditure this year, particularly when revenue from oil exports and tax receipts looks likely to suffer from subdued global oil prices and rising unemployment levels. There is little chance of an improvement in the short term and we believe that any risks to our real GDP forecast of negative 1.5% lie to the downside. This quarter we have introduced a significant new aspect to BMI’s Defence reports: the City Terrorism Rating (CTR). This assesses the risk of a terrorist attack. The CTR takes into account the overall BMI Terrorism Rating for the country in question. It also incorporates the ‘prevalence’ of terrorism, which recognises the frequency of attacks and whether the city is a target for terrorists. The CTR also recognises the ‘threat’ of terrorism in terms of the likely numbers of victims and the ability of groups to launch sustained campaigns. In Colombia we assess the CTRs for Bogota which at 32.5, having been dragged down by domestic issues, is one of the region’s lowest scores. These city-specific Ratings are created via an integration of the state-wide threat, with an evaluation of the city-specific characteristics and level of activity.