SEOUL: The South Korea-Colombia Free Trade Agreement will take effect next month, three years and five months after the two countries signed the pact. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said Wednesday that the Seoul-Bogota trade pact will be effectuated on July 15th. This comes as Colombia notified Seoul on Wednesday that it received final approval from its Constitutional Court. The South Korean National Assembly ratified the FTA in April 2014.
The trade deal would phase out most of the tariffs imposed by South Korea and Colombia on each other’s products within ten years after its implementation. With a population of 47-point-six million, Colombia is one of the fastest-growing consumer markets in Latin America.
South Korea’s major exports to Colombia are cars, auto parts, synthetic resins and petrochemical products, while it imports oil, coffee and alloy iron from the Latin American country. The South Korean-Colombia deal is the first FTA that Bogota signed with an Asian country. South Korea has established free trade pacts with other Latin American countries, including Chile in 2004 and Peru in 2011.
