18 June 2025

Thank you. Chair.

First of all, I would like to extend my warm welcome to the delegation of Colombia led by His Excellency, Vice-Minister Felipe QUINTERO SUAREZ. I also want to express my gratitude to the Discussant, Ambassador Mr. Raul CANO RICCIARDI, for your insightful remarks. My thanks also go to the Secretariat for their dedicated work.

China commends Colombia for its economic resilience and progress amidst significant challenges. Despite the fluctuation of prices of international goods and the COVID-19 pandemic, Colombia's real GDP expanded by an average of 2.8% each year from 2018 to 2023, leading to a continuous rise in GDP per capita. These achievements come from Colombia’s persistent pursuit of economic transition and export diversification.

China notes that Colombia introduced comprehensive economic reform plans to diversify its economy from a mining and energy-dependent model to a more sustainable and innovative one. We also notice that a series of legislative and policy changes have been made, including simplifying customs procedures, strengthening intellectual property rights protection, and improving the product quality policy etc. With further efforts to advance such structural change, we believe the Colombia development story is poised to continue. In the meantime, we encourage Colombia to implement efficient measures to ensure a secure and predictable business environment for foreign investors, especially in critical sectors.

Chair, China appreciates Colombia’s unwavering support for the rule-based multilateral trading system and commitment to the dispute settlement mechanism. In this regard, we especially thank Colombia for continuously calling for the Appellate Body appointment, on behalf of more than one hundred Members, as we all firmly believe that bringing back the independent and impartial two-tier dispute settlement system should be the top priority of this organization. This proposal has been on the agenda of DSB for 87 times. Colombia and other developing Members, who are more susceptible to unilateral and protectionist measures, should not be further denied access to the well-functioning dispute settlement mechanism. We also notice that Colombia, as one of the original participating members of MPIA, has been actively participating in MPIA and has contributed as an arbitrator and Co-Organiser with high professional qualities.

In addition, we also highly praise Colombia’s constructive engagement in other WTO negotiations and discussions, including ratification of the Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies, participation in the JSI on E-commerce, etc. We encourage Colombia to join the Investment Facilitation for Development Agreement and the Agreement on Electronic Commerce. In this time of heightened turbulence and uncertainty, concrete support is more than ever needed to uphold the multilateral trading system. We call on all other Members to follow Colombia’s example and reconfirm our support for the organization.

China and Colombia have always been close partners in both multilateral and bilateral platforms. In 2023, China and Colombia strengthened bilateral ties by elevating our relationship to the level of a strategic partnership. In May 2025, witnessed by President Xi Jinping and President Gustavo Petro, China and Colombia signed “the Belt and Road” joint cooperation plan, which injects new impetus into our bilateral economic cooperation. China is Colombia’s second-largest trading partner, a major source of investment, and a critical builder of infrastructure. Based on the principle of mutual respect and shared gains, trade cooperation between China and Colombia has experienced rapid growth, with bilateral trade reaching US$21 billion in 2024, increased by 11.7% year on year. The excellent performance of bilateral trade well reflects the strong trade potential in various areas between our two countries, including green development and the digital economy.

Colombia is now actively pursuing trade structure optimisation and economic transformation. We expect Colombia to accomplish even more significant progress in its future development for the good of its people and the world.

In this regard, China appreciates the responses from Colombia to our written questions.

To conclude, I wish this TPR a full success.

Thank you.