 Welcome, everyone, at this press conference about capital markets. Actually, the official title is Accelerating Capital Markets' Development in Emerging Economies. And we're looking at the country case study of Colombia. That's a very long title. And so I'm going to ask one of my speakers, André Bilello, to explain a little bit what that means. And then afterwards we'll hear from Minister Cárdenas about his vision for the development of Colombia's capital markets. And then we have a special guest today that we welcome, Minister of Trade. Welcome to all of the speakers, and thank you to everyone who came to the press conference. Let's dive right into it because we have only 15 minutes, and I'll start with André. André, you have made this report with your team to talk about the capital market of Colombia as a case study of how capital markets can drive economic growth. Could you explain briefly to begin what the situation of Colombia's capital market is? And then tell us a little bit more about what recommendations you have to develop the capital markets in Colombia. Thank you, Peter, and thank you, Minister, for taking the time for the press conference. It's an honor to be up here with you. As context, this report is part of an initiative that we've run at the forum for two years now on accelerating capital markets' development in emerging economies. We started in 2014, given the increasing importance of capital markets, especially to long-term investing, as well as the fact that in a lot of emerging economies the size of capital markets remain somewhat underdeveloped compared to the current size of the economies and the potential those economies have moving forward. Colombia had a decade of very impressive growth of their capital markets, and like many emerging markets, at the end of the commodities boom a few years ago, have now been facing a few difficulties, a few headwinds. This is not exclusive to Colombia, and I should mention as well that this report covers Indonesia as well. Capital markets is a very broad topic, though, so in conjunction with the ministry and in conjunction with market participants here in Colombia, over which we interviewed about a hundred, both in Colombia and abroad, the idea was to focus on the equity market, particularly the depth and liquidity in the equity market, which was seen as being somewhat below the level of some of Colombia's emerging market peers. The report contains various action areas that have been recommended by the market stakeholders. I should add the forum did not write this report. This is really a reflection of those who participated, both from the public sector and the private sector side. And there were four kind of action areas that I'll mention very briefly that were seen as the shortest-term priorities. The first one is creating additional investment opportunities in the market, broadening the investor base. This was one that was mentioned many times, both in our interviews and in an event we did that the minister attended in Bogota in December, approving market access and efficiency, and finally attracting global interest from the foreign investment community. And these were the four key areas. Could you explain as briefly also why you think that it's beneficial for Colombia to work on these areas, and perhaps telling us first a bit about the size, some key figures of the size of Colombian capital markets, and then what the potential benefits are for the economy to work on those? Sure. In the annex of the report, if you look at the global competitive support that the forum publishes every year, Colombia has been steadily moving up the rankings over the last two to three years. It actually, in many respects, is ahead of Indonesia, which is the other country in this report. And what's interesting is over the last couple of years, the area or the pillar of that report where Colombia has done the best and improved the most is financial market development. And there's been a clear link between financial market development and economic growth across many countries. And as I mentioned, Colombia had a long period of very strong growth. Part of the reason that we chose Colombia as well as the fundamentals are very good as well. Investor protections are the best in Latin America. They're top 10 in the world here in Colombia. The market, as I said, has been growing quite substantially. And Colombia is also in the process of embarking on its largest infrastructure development plan in its history. We heard the President mention earlier today that peace is nearing with the final negotiations. And estimates suggest that between 1% to 2% additional economic growth may come from that as well. So Colombia is increasingly being seen as an interesting and important investment destination for foreign investors. And building up the local market with domestic players as well can only help with Colombia's long-term growth points. Last question before I turn to Mr. Katinas. I just wanted to get those key figures from you. The number of companies listed on stock exchange is an interesting point to talk about. The free float, the average free float. And if you have any other number that you can share with us about the key numbers. Yeah, there are fewer companies listed on the Colombia stock exchange than their peers here in Latin America. About 70? 74 I think is the exact. And a lot of large companies, Ecopetrol for example, are a lot of the market capitalization that's here. And actually speaking of stock markets, another area that I didn't mention that I'm sure the minister will mention as well is Colombia's integration into Mila, the integrated market, the Pacific Alliance which is another positive factor for investors when they're looking at Colombia. The market capitalization of the Mila stock exchanges now which are Mexico, Chile, Peru and Colombia is now larger than Brazil which is the largest capital market in Latin America. Okay, well thank you for those points and for your insights. And now I want to turn to Minister Kerenas. And perhaps what I could ask from you is what your vision is for the development of Colombia's capital markets and what your priorities are in your administration time. Well, thank you very much. So let's do this in two steps. One, I'll answer some of the questions in English for the English-speaking audience and then we could do some comments in Spanish. To speak Spanish, there's instantaneous translation, so that's okay. Okay, so just a word in English. The World Economic Forum has kindly offered to Colombia a debate on two key issues, capital markets and financial inclusion using the framework of the web which means engaging in a conversation, the private sector, the academia and government. So we've had two roundtables, two working days, full working days in the last six months with the different players on these two topics. Here we're talking about the capital markets initiative. And after the research that was conducted by the web, after listening to all the views of the different participants and players in the capital markets in Colombia, we've come to a set of conclusions on what are the priorities, what needs to be done. Let me focus on what we think is the most important aspect of that, which is the integration of our capital markets within the context of the Pacific Alliance. The Pacific Alliance has been a great initiative for promoting trade. The first aspect of the Pacific Alliance was basically on the trade in goods and services. Now we're taking a step beyond, and we're going to move into the integration of our capital markets. What is the initiative here? We want pension funds and other institutional investors to work in the four countries as if it was their domestic market. That means that our institutional investors can have a regional market. So the restrictions that apply are lifted if a Colombian pension fund invests in Peru in the stock exchange or buys bonds in Peru. That should be considered as a domestic investment and should not be computed under the ceilings of foreign investment. Same for us. We want the Mexican, the Peruvian, the Chilean pension funds to come and invest in Colombia, and we need that, especially now in the context of the infrastructure plan, the 4G, because in the 4G we need more muzzle, we need more investors, to deepen our capital markets to make sure that these projects find adequate financing. That's one aspect of this. The second element here is the use of the capital markets in order to promote growth in the small and medium enterprises. It was already mentioned that the size of our capital market has been increasing. Certainly the market capitalization of our stock exchange has increased. That's for sure. But that in a way is a reflection that the bigger corporations in Colombia have grown. But now we need more participants. We need more listed companies. So we need to push aggressively the benefits of the capital markets for more companies to participate, especially the SMEs. This is part of our vision, the vision of a new economy, an economy where the private sector has the right incentives in the financial markets, in tax policies, in issues related to education, infrastructure, so that in the manufacturing sector, agriculture, tourism, the export of health services, for example, can actually take the lead and be the sectors that grow in Colombia at the fastest pace. And for that, we need access to the capital markets for those players. So in some, we are seeing our capital markets development as crucial for this new stage that the Colombian economy is entering, where again, it's the private initiative, it's entrepreneurs, it's innovators that will play the key role in stimulating and taking the lead in our economy. Thank you very much. And so I remember from that, that we'll see within the Pacific Alliance hopefully one day all investments, as if they were domestic investments, which would bring more muscle as you sit into the development of capital markets, and that should allow you to work on that new economy that you were talking about. Is there anything specific that you would like to mention or should I turn over to Minister La Couture to make an announcement about her specialty, which is trade and industry? Well, thank you for the invitation, and I do apologize to getting the press conference as we did, but we wanted to share a little bit more about the development of Colombia as a country that have new opportunities and also the industrial development that we have been going through the past of this year. If I may allow, I would like to talk in Spanish so it can be easy to understand by our colleagues here in Colombia. One of the things that we were mentioning and the reason why Minister Cardenas invited me to participate at this press conference is because of the wonderful results that the Colombian industry has had year to date. One of the most important opportunities and actually one of the main reasons why the World Economic Forum decided to stage this meeting in Medellin, Colombia is precisely because of the change that the country has undergone in recent years and also because of the transformation taking place, not just in industry but also in each of the different sectors. The results of the survey and the industry numbers published today are evidence of that. We see that the joint work done by the Ministry of Finance and by each of the ministries that impact industry are bearing fruit. Colombia has a positive result today of 8.4 percent and if we compare that to 2015, it was minus 2.6 percent at the time. So we've seen a growth not just in numbers but in sectors as well. We now have 29 sectors that are growing and have had positive benefits and this is supplemented by industry's response and also more sales 8.8 percent and in employment we have seen a 1.1 growth in formal employment which brings about not just long-term growth but also constant growth and also the formalization of jobs in Colombia and that is what we wanted to tell you and thank you for giving me the chance to tell you. There's an enormous rebound in economic growth in a certain part from minus 2 percent to about 8 percent year over year if my Spanish is good enough and otherwise I will listen to the translation. But I want to thank all of you to come here also to Minister Lakotur for your announcement, Minister Kerenas and Andrei Belelio from the World Economic Forum. If you have some time to answer some questions I would suggest perhaps that we take the conversation one-to-one with a few journalists outside informed that we have another press conference coming up here in about 8 minutes and we'll have to make room for that. If you allow me to say one additional word in Spanish. Please. As pointed out by the Minister of Trade, Industry and Tourism the data published today by Dane in respect of industry growth and these sectors' sales numbers are fantastic and reveal that the industry is the leading sector of the Colombian economy the sector growing at the highest possible rates and this isn't just the Cartagena refinery that does contribute, no. This includes 29 sectors that make up our industry and this is a very important and positive piece of data and what is driving industry in Colombia? Well, imports substitution. Colombians are now buying Colombian products that have a better price compared to imports and have nothing to envy in terms of quality so sectors like the garment industry, the shoe industry, beverages are all sectors with very positive growth rates and as far as sales are concerned the growth in total sales was 5.4% in April 5.4% in April and the important thing is that for the first time car sales increased again and these had been seriously hit by the revaluation of the peso and now we see positive growth in car sales and this is very good news for the automobile industry because we now have a positive car sales number so in short the new model, the new economy driven by the sectors led by Minister Maria Claudia La Couture is a model bearing the expected results. Tourism, industry, trade are all sectors that are driving the leadership and are driving the engines that will let us have a 3% growth this year which is very positive because it's a very complex international situation 3% growth is a favorable result that the positive results also come from import substitution which shows the strength of the industry and the economy thank you everyone for your attendance and if you have further questions let's take them outside thank you so much