A Flowering Basketcase; From failed state to model reformer in just a few years, can it be Colombia?

Newsweek International, September, 2004 by Beith, Malcolm; Duffy, Mark

Byline: Malcolm Beith (With Mark Duffy in Bogota)

When one thinks of welcoming investment climates, Colombia doesn't usually spring to mind. To foreigners, the country is more famous for its guerrilla warfare, kidnappings, drug production and narco-terrorism. So it might come as a surprise that the World Bank, in a report this month on "Doing Business in 2005," deemed Colombia the second most improved country in the world in which to do business. The magnitude of private-sector reform in Colombia over the past year is "unique" in Latin America, says the report's author, Simeon Djankov.

Colombia has long been unique for all the wrong reasons, as home to Latin America's most persistent Marxist rebels, and its largest drug cartels. But the emerging...

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