Colombia’s Caribbean Governors Unite on Trains, Ports, Cheaper Energy and More Autonomy

COLOMBIA · REGIONS

Colombia’s Caribbean governors have agreed to stop lobbying Bogotá separately and push a single common agenda, built around cheaper energy, a regional train, better ports and airports, and far more territorial autonomy.

“Now or never” in Barranquilla

The Caribbean governors reached the agreement at a forum called Caribe Motor, held on Thursday 27 August in Barranquilla. It was organised by the newspaper El Tiempo and its financial daily Portafolio.

For nearly four hours, business leaders, academics and officials debated one question. What must the region do in four years to reach 2030 more competitive and less unequal?

On stage were governors Eduardo Verano of Atlántico and Erasmo Zuleta of Córdoba, plus Cartagena’s mayor Dumek Turbay. Turbay summed up the mood with one phrase: it is now or never.

All three shared one diagnosis. The Caribbean must stop presenting projects department by department and build a regional agenda with common priorities.

Energy comes first

Ask any business on Colombia’s coast about its biggest cost, and electricity comes up within minutes. Tariffs are high and blackouts are common, especially outside the big cities.

Zuleta demanded a solution for Afinia and Air-e, the two companies that distribute power across much of the Caribbean. Both have become bywords for unreliable service.

The governor put it in political terms. The region’s mineral and energy wealth, he said, still does not show up in the living conditions of its people.

Turbay set the deadline. By 2030, he said, the Caribbean’s problems with energy reliability and tariffs must be nothing more than a memory.

A train to tie the coast together

Asked to name one project capable of uniting the region, Verano did not hesitate. His answer was a regional train connecting the Caribbean departments.

Colombia barely uses its railways today, and only about a third of the national network operates. The flagship freight project is a 526-kilometre line from La Dorada to Chiriguaná, costing about US$843 million.

A coastal passenger and freight train would be a much bigger bet. Verano framed it as long-term infrastructure that transforms how people and goods move.

Turbay chose the hardware of trade instead. He listed ports, airports and big road corridors that connect the coast to the rest of the country.

The Magdalena river, Colombia’s Mississippi, also made the list. Making it navigable again would give the interior a cheap waterway to Caribbean ports.

The autonomy fight underneath it all

Colombia is one of Latin America’s most centralised countries. Verano put a number on it: about 85 percent of public resources are managed by the national government, and 15 percent by departments and municipalities.

His proposal is a 50-50 distribution. The Caribbean governors also want to turn the coast’s current association of departments into a formal territorial entity.

Zuleta gave the idea its own name, a Región Entidad Territorial. It would be a permanent body managing regional projects while mayors and governors handle daily needs.

Verano went further and raised a new regional vote with legal effects. In plain terms, that means Caribbean citizens deciding directly on the region’s future status.

Beyond concrete: education, water and tourism

Zuleta laid out the education gap outside the capitals. In some territories, only five to seven of every hundred secondary-school graduates reach higher education.

Córdoba’s answer is an English programme now reaching 35,000 public-school students. Another 1,800 young people are training as technical graduates matched to local industries.

Drinking water joined the list, alongside a water plan for the region. For a coast that includes the arid La Guajira peninsula, water is as strategic as any port.

Turbay added tourism to the common agenda. Cartagena, Barranquilla, Santa Marta and the beaches of Córdoba and Sucre, he said, should sell shared products that can compete internationally.

What comes next

The honest caveat for the Caribbean governors is that nothing was funded in Barranquilla. The forum produced a consensus on priorities, not a budget or a construction schedule.

Turbay argued the timing is unusually good, because the new national government is paying attention to the Caribbean. President Abelardo de la Espriella took office on 7 August.

The test will be institutional. If the promised territorial entity and the 50-50 fiscal debate reach Congress, the wish list becomes a negotiation.

The Caribbean governors gave themselves until 2030 to show results. Voters on the coast have heard such promises before, and patience is thinner than the power supply.

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