 to be with the ministers of trade and investment, Rubar Codillas and Maria Claudia Lacutide, who will be signing two very important bilateral agreements for promoting trade and investments and enhancing cooperation between the two countries' tourism promotion offices. I greet Gustavo Garamillo, president of ProColombia, who is joining us today at this very important meeting. A lot of progress is being made in Cuba. We will later on have a special session where we can hear about what has happened in the country in the meantime. Let me hand the microphone over to the ministers so that they can talk to us about these two very important agreements. Maria Claudia, thank you very much, Maria Sol, and welcome to Colombia, to the minister of Cuba. Today is a very special day in our binational relation that is being strengthened today. Thanks to these agreements, this is a result of work we've been doing for several months. Minister Sarasti has been working with the ministry of Cuba in an effort to enhance the benefits provided to Colombian entrepreneurs who want to integrate into regional agreements. The deepening of these trade agreements leads us to give our entrepreneurs the chance to grow through internationalization. At the international juncture in which we live, a context of contraction where we see falling prices in commodities and raw materials and commodities are going through deceleration. And it has led many countries to reduce procurement. So these trade agreements strengthen the opportunity to create more business. Cuba is a country that has wonderful opportunities today. We, it has worked on a very interesting evolution from different perspectives. And what we want to do is to continue being your partner and work jointly and together with Cuba. We have entered into an agreement that includes over 2,600 tariff that leads to zero tariffs and over 2,600 goods, textiles, garments can participate in the supply of products that Cuban users and entrepreneurs can use and buy. We are also going to enter into an agreement where we will integrate Colombian businesses, that is corporate Colombia, to make sure that our businessmen will also offer Cuban products here. So this trade agreement seeks to not just reduce tariffs, but also implement good practices and to identify rules of origin that are appropriate for both countries that we have, the tools that will allow us to deepen our sales and our commercial relation and turn it into a lasting commercial relation. That's why the government of Colombia is overjoyed to sign this agreement because it will deepen trade between the two countries. And I'd like to welcome the Minister of Cuba to Colombia when I can think of no better way to welcome you to Colombia than the signing of this agreement between us. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. Allow me to thank you for all the kindness showered upon us since our arrival in Medellin by Colombian authorities, as well as the organizers of this event. As Marisol said, yes, this act we are celebrating is clear evidence that the forum isn't just a place for, you know, having academic type discussions and debates, but we can also enter into agreements that I'm sure will prove very important to our country's bilateral relation, as explained by Minister Maria Claudia. We, for quite some time now, have been working with Colombia in an effort to find the ways and means to strengthen our bilateral trade in a manner that will profit from the wonderful relationship between our two countries. And I think that we must also bring Cuban and Colombian entrepreneurs closer together so that they too can engage in business and besides this agreement of economic supplementation, I'm sure, will provide many tariff benefits for Colombian products coming to Cuba and Cuban products coming to Colombia and that is why pro-Colombian, pro-Cuba, will sign the agreement. The purpose of this agreement is to promote economic activities, not just trade, but also investment. And I think that we are on the right track. I'm hopeful that the steps taken by our governments will, in practice, translate into better and greater interaction between our two countries. Obviously Cuba's balance of trade is a negative one and we don't import much from Colombia but we want to import more from Colombia and export more Cuban products, not just products, but goods and services and to profit from our supplementarities and hopefully see this come through for the benefit of our peoples. And I thank you kindly for being here today and having the chance to sign these agreements. Thank you very much, Mr. Minister. I would like to give you the chance to ask questions about the agreements to be signed here. Good morning, Edwin Borges from El Espectador. Could you tell us what the commercial balance is between the two countries and what Cuban products are of interest to Colombia? We have a positive trade balance with Cuba. We've exported over $6 million and last year we saw significant growth in the number of exports and the process we signed today will allow 1,200 products to find their way to Cuba and this I'm sure will impact the products that supplement our own so that we can work shoulder to shoulder with the government of Cuba and bring Cuban products to Colombia. The idea is to provide entrepreneurs greater working opportunities through internationalization and goes hand in hand, as Minister Rodrigo said, with a program for promoting imports and exports to be signed by Felipe Jaramillo from ProColombia and the Cuban Export Promoting Agency ProCuba in an effort to enhance trade relations between our countries, thanks to all this promotional work. In the next six months, we will organize a trade mission, a commercial mission to Cuba so that entrepreneurs of both countries will be able to identify these business opportunities. In Cuba, let me tell you that the commercial exchange was a total of $70 million, but we are sure that the documents we will sign today will allow us to expand this significantly. Please take your name, Vicente Cortado Caracol, of those 2,000 products. Will they be coming in with zero tariff or will that have a special gradual phasing out of taxes and to the Minister of Cuba, sir, I'd like to ask that there are many alternatives, many avenues regarding let's say pharmaceutical products. What could you sell, Colombia? What alternatives are out there? Because I know that the medicine in Cuba is very advanced and there are many products available in many Colombians traveling to Cuba for healthcare. And in this specific case, what could you sell to Colombians? Regarding elimination of taxes, yes, some products will come in with zero tariff and others will see the tariffs gradually falling phased out. One of the things we have seen is that today Cuba has not just evolved in trade and commerce, but we must also bear in mind that there is a very interesting potential we can work on today in trade and commerce, but also in tourism because this bilateral relationship goes beyond trade and commerce. We want this to be a long-term relationship. We want all our sectors to work together and we want to jointly promote tourism. It's very limited today. We have a very low number of Cubans coming to Colombia, less than 8,000 Cuban tourists come to Colombia and 28,000 Colombian tourists go to Cuba. So there is yet a lot to do in this regard. Regarding health, it is true that Cuba does have a certain potential. On the one hand, healthcare and the pharmaceutical industry and particularly biotechnological products. We already have Cuban exports of pharmaceuticals and biotechnological products to Colombia in any event. I believe that there is ample opportunity to do business. It's a complex market because major transnational companies dominate this market. However, there are opportunities whenever local companies like the ones we have in Cuba produce the top quality products and I hope that they will find their way to Colombia to benefit the people of Colombia. So in services, we also have services, patients that could be cared for in Cuba but in services that could be delivered in Colombia. We today have medical staff in over 70 countries working under different modalities and tailored to the needs of each case. And if you allow me, I would like to address what Maria Claudia just said about tourism. I would say that more so than Colombian and Cuban tourists visiting each other, we have to work on identifying opportunities for showing tourism flows from other countries visiting Colombian Cuba because we have supplementaries as well. We have, I mean, in Cuba it's difficult to do the type of tourism you can do in Medellin where you have these beautiful mountains and where you have the grand geos, potato sculptures in the, you know, our beaches are very attractive too. So what I'm thinking is that we this year should try to hit the four million visitor mark which is a number similar to the number of visitors coming to Colombia and try to have them all come to our respective countries. And the idea is also to put in contact like our hotels and other tourism service providers to enhance tourism between our two countries. I see we have another question and why don't we entertain these two questions and we sign the agreement and maybe there may be time for taking another question. I work with FM RC and radio in Colombia. What other investments or what investment is Colombia making in Cuba and Mr. Madam Minister? Could you shed clarity as to the products? I don't know whether you did answer the question. I'm under the impression you did not. Regarding investment, this is one of the priority we've been discussing with both entrepreneurs and governments of Cuba to see how we can elicit investment in Cuba and one of the things we're looking at is just the free zone of El Mariel that allows any entrepreneur to receive development benefits within certain sectors identified by Cuba. And obviously, Colombian entrepreneurs are very much interested in bringing tourism to Cuba and provide tourism activities inside Cuba. We're working on those two agendas and more so than investment is seeing how we can strengthen the relationship with products where Colombia is very competitive with agricultural products, cosmetics, textiles. There we have some very interesting opportunities that I'm sure would prove beneficial and would benefit greatly from the deepening of the trade agreement we're signing today. We'll take the last question. I don't think we'll have time for a third. Then we proceed to sign the agreements. Just one more place, quickly now. Four ministers going to Cuba. We have the visa requirement to meet and actually there are certain time periods that do not exceed one month period. Would it be possible to change or modify the visa requirement bearing in mind that we want to incentivize tourism to the two countries because the truth is that is not easy. Traveling as a tourism, you need no visa. You are sold a tourism card sold to you by the travel agency when you buy your airfare and that can take 30 seconds, really. I mean, that's not a long and protracted process, far from it. But if you are going to travel for business or something and we have the Cuban ambassador to Colombia who won't let me lie to you and I don't think it takes them a month to issue a visa. If they do, Mr. Ambassador, please correct that as promptly as possible. What I'm trying to say is that for tourism, there's no problem if but for another type of visit. Yes, the visa requirement does exist and that is something that has to be done swiftly and quickly. And if that's not the case, it has to be resolved. No doubt. But I, you know, I trust my ambassador. He's a very serious man. Just look at him very well. I would now like to ask you ministers to please come and sign the agreement.