HAVANA.- (ACN) Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos Calderón arrived shortly after 8:30 pm Sunday in this capital, on a two-day official visit, with which he plans to boost economic ties between the two nations.
At the Jose Marti International Airport in Havana Santos was received by Rogelio Sierra Díaz, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of Cuba, and a large group of diplomats from both countries.
President Santos was accompanied by about twenty entrepreneurs and the Minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism, María Claudia Lacouture, and the president of ProColombia, Felipe Jaramillo.
During his stay in Cuba, the South American president will be received by the highest authorities of the island, will participate in a business forum that will take place in the Hotel Nacional in Havana city, and shortly thereafter he will lay a wreath before the monument to the National Hero,
José Martí, in the Revolution Square.
The Colombian presidency in a statement announced the delegation includes the business delegation of construction, packaging, agribusiness, food, electricity and electronics, engineering and oil services, and energy and chemicals.
In 2016, exports to Cuba amounted to $ 33.5 million, the vast majority of "non-mining energy goods", while in the first five months of this year the island bought $ 12.7 million, according to figures from the Colombian government.
The President will attend on Monday a tribute to the late Nobel Prize for Literature, Gabriel García Márquez, at the Marques de Arcos Palace in Old Havana.
Since taking office in 2010, Juan Manuel Santos has made several visits to Cuba, the first from March 7 to 9, 2012, and then to participate in the Second Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in January of 2014 and returned in September 2015 for the signing of the agreement on Transitional Justice in the peace process for Colombia.
He was last in the Cuban capital in June of last year when he attended the signing of agreements on cease-fire and bilateral and definitive hostilities, the abandonment of weapons and security guarantees between his government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - People's Army (FARC-EP).