President of colombia here as our special guest, president uk. Hes not pensively with washington, d. C. Hes been here for 14 years off and on and he got some of his graduate degrees here from American University and George Washington university. Hes trained as a lawyer and is working as well at the Interamerican Development bank where he served as a senior officer in the cultural area and also special advisor to the president of the bank on colombia. He was elected in june of 2018 and assumed his office in augus. He will make some opening remarks and then following that i will come up and preside over some questions and then have anybody here who wants to ask a question be able to do so. We will go and tell exactly 9 30. Everything is on the record, and so please when you do have a question standup, identify yourself, your affiliation and then asked the question, not a long statement. That would be appreciated, and one question per person would be appreciated. Okay, its my honor to do you introduce the president of colombia, president duque. [applause] thank you so much. Good morning. Its a great pleasure for me to be here with you. I want to thank you, david, for your introduction. I want to welcome friends from different think tanks, former public servants, members of the international Development Bank organizations. So my great purpose of this morning is to, in ten minutes, tried to describe where is colombia heading to, and why its very important what is taking place in colombia nowadays. So after i finish that we will open this session for q a. Let me begin this morning by saying that colombia is in the process of a great transformation. Where i ira for the presidencyi said that i wanted a colombiabased on three pillars. Legality, which is the rule of law. Entrepreneurship, which means that colombia must embrace as no time before the entrepreneurial spirit, be able to call for more International Investment in the country, transform its economy, look towards the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and last but not least, which is the major objective of our administration, close the social gaps. So if i may put in terms of an equation, what we always said is legality plus entrepreneurship equals fairness for closing the social gaps. That is the reason why, since i embraced the cost of running for the presidency, i said that latin america is not divided between right and left. That latin america is witnessing a political spectrum where there are two kinds of persons for running countries. The demagogues and the pedagogues. The demagogues are those who, on a permanent basis, promise the holy land. We say in spanish [speaking spanish] so they try to sell a society full of promises, and at the end they end up destroying private initiative. They end up destroying liberties, weakening free media, weakening any form of citizen participation. And the pedagogues are the ones who Oriented Society to big goals and big purposes. And they are aligned with promoting the entrepreneurial spirit, independent institutions, and obviously also motivate a permanent citizen participation. And i consider that our administration, and colombia itself, is a good example of pedagogy. Thats why weve been able to implement their important policies, and thats why when you look at where was colombia 20 years ago and where is it today, i think colombia has been one of the most important Success Stories in latin america. I must also say that the achievements that colombia has accomplished have also to do with a very important support from the International Community, and i want to highlight this morning, that colombia has received from the United States a very strong bipartisan and bicameral support when it comes to congress in order to achieve many of the most important transformations. But since one year ago our administration decided to move forward on the results. We decided that we wanted colombia to become a high income country. And that might not happen substantially in the next three years. You might ask why. Because colombia has an income per capita of less than 7000, while the rest of the oecd member countries have incomes per capita that are about 30,000. So the question is, how long would it take us to reach those levels of income . It will take us 100 years growing at 1 , or it can take us two decades or less if we grow above 5 . And thats what we want colombia to head. Thats what we want colombia to embrace, to be able to grow, and with that growth, close the social gaps here so the first thing we did a year ago is that we wanted colombia to differentiate from the rest of the countries in the region, and adopt a competitive, probusiness policy. So instead of looking at what happened in the past what we had tax reforms, with the state always want to spend more and they passed a check to the private sector with high levels of taxation that affected competitiveness, and we made the most important reforms in terms of lowering the corporate taxes too small, medium and large sized corporations. By that, just in one year, weve seen Foreign Direct Investment in colombia past 24 . We have seen also why latin america is expected to grow 0. 5 fisher, colombia is expected to grow above 3 . Why . Because we have been given the right signals. We also introduced important reforms in sectors like hell, and Information Technology where we pass the bill so that by 2022, 70 of the colombia population will have faster internet and will be moving to 5g 5g networks throughout the country. Thats why we also introduced a reform to cut red tape. And in one year weve been able to digital digitalized, eliminr minimize more than 1000 procedures that were heavily costly for the private sector development. So those things are in motion. We also introduced the Fourth Industrial Revolution, centers and regulation. When the administration began, i remember i spoke to Charles Schwab and i said i want the World Economic forum to bring one of the Fourth Industrial Revolution centers to our country. They said that was going to take long, but, in fact, in less than a year we have the first, Fourth Industrial Revolution center in an hispanic speaking country and it is based on ai, irt, and blockchain. Weve also put together a mission to develop the local Capital Markets with the support of professor from mit and 80 other forms that were about to embrace are based on executive orders and a couple of reforms that should be taken to congress. But those things are happening, and colombia has also experienced in the last year the best years of the tourism sector. Last year we had 4. 2 million nonresident visitors, the highest rate in 15 years. So this you the numbers are going to be even better. And also Household Consumption rates have reached the highest in 44 months. Energy consumption which is a a good indicator of how the gdp is behaving is growing at 4. 1 , one of the highest of the last years. So i think colombia is open for business, has embraced entrepreneurship, and looks toward the future as the country that wants to become the Silicon Valley of latin america. I met a couple of months ago i saw him in new york city this week, and softbank, the Largest TechnologyInvestment Bank in the world has created a fund of 5 billion for latin america. In the first visit to the region, he saw whats taking place in colombia and that already invested 1 billion in one Single Company in colombia. And they are looking at more companies and startups or firms that event in the market for three or four years with a high potential of becoming what is socalled unicorns come which are companies that grow at three digit levels and very fast. So this is what colombia looks like and want to look like in economic terms. Now, we need to see with clarity that any effort that we can make successfully on developing the private sector has to be connected with closing the social gaps. So i feel happy that in one year of our administration, we have been able to give strong signals, the highest budget ever in education, the highest budget ever on health. We have granted what we call subsidies of Interest Rate and down payment for the poorest of the poor to acquire housing, and in one year we have given more of those lines of credit and support than what was given in the last four years. And this also allows me to put the idea that it is not just the government giving the solutions, but its also allowing people to change their lives. We have made a program so that people were just think 120 per month with a fixed line of credit in terms of interest and a fixed line in terms of Monthly Payment coming becoming owners of a house in less than 15 years. Making this massively is going to be a major social success. But we have also brought water and sanitation in one year to more than 450,000 colombians. We have been able to take 16,000 families for the first time electricity, using individual solar panels. We have been able to see the first 80,000 students in december, number 67,000, that will go for free to public universities, connected to the programs that will give them their skills so that they can be successful in times of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. I think, at the same time we are making important reforms that are connected to entrepreneurship but at the same time to closing the social gaps when it comes to energy. We have enabled to put together a reform that allows us to pass from less than 60 megawatts of soft capacity nonprofessional renewals to get the 1500 by the end of our administration. And we will surpass the target. We passed the electric vehicle bill so that we have a cleaner transportation. We have proof for the first time in latin america, we created the First National council against deforestation and we have gotten deforestation to produce by 17 in just one year. And we have called for the pack with other countries in amazon so that we can protect that very important sanctuary for biodiversity and for the world. So all this is happening and it is also connected with the rule of law. I believe in peace, but peace with what gelded. We are not at administration that plays politics with peace. And i think the worst mistake that was committed in the last years in colombia was that, for political reasons, the communes were divided between friends and enemies of peace. And, in fact, we are all friends at peace with the exception of those who want to embrace terrorism and violence to express themselves or to intimidate the population. Thats why we built a policy that is called peace with legality. That is highly compromised of making a Success Story out of the rain forest cooperation process of those of left criminality, who have left the weapons and want to engage into a path of legality, sharing with the rest of the colombian population for their lives. And in one year, with this policy we can make the right comparisons as i said it yesterday, in any event we had here in d. C. 20 20 years, 20 months of implementation asked for my oath of office, and within an office for 13 months. When you look at how many collective productive projects were approved before our oath of office, just two. Today, we are 29. Have approved 27, that are reaching more than 1400 former members of farc with alternatives for their lives. Regional focus Development Plans which are the cornerstone of the support for the colombian people, in those regions that were badly affected by terrorism, they saw that in 20 months of implementation for my administration, only two of those plans were created. We have already finished the 16th. We made 14 of those regional Development Plans happen by calling the people to get their takes, their prospects, their objectives. And we have called the private sector to actively participate in what we call words for taxes. More than 150 million have been used to attend those communitie communities. And weve been also able to put together the First National catastrophe policy. That was crucial so that we can have a better policy framework for land, and to be able to differentiate the uses of land in favor of the most effective activities. We actually had great support from the United States and usaid i see your former ambassador whitaker who participated actively in the policy, and thank you for being here, ambassador. And we went to i found that was brutalized for many years by paramilitaries and guerrilla members. And we had the first massive land titling program have performed in colombia in a municipality. Not only we granted the titles but we made the formalization available, but we also made the multipurpose so we can use the land for the better needs of the people. So all those things are taking place in colombia. And i can say that peace with legality is based on two very important principles. Achieving a Success Story out of the reincorporation process, and be strong, hard, and bring to justice those who want to go back to criminality. But we have challenges. Yes, we do. And one of the major challenges has to do with the legal props pick because i think the biggest failure of peace colombia was that during peace colombia, the expansion of illegal crops grew at exponential levels. From 20152018 we passed 60,000 hectares of coca when we assumed office. The manual eradication groups in colombia that were above the 100 number in the year 2010 when we assumed office, there were only 23. 23. Today we have more than 110. And we have been able for the first time in seven years, with our determination, to put it into the exponential growth and start having a reduction. Why am i so insistent on this topic . Because with more coca, there will always be less hes. Piece. All the measures are possible which are eradication, substitution, alternatives, services and having precision aerial spray when needed and considering that many of the fields are full of land mines who are supported by snipers that are paid by the cartel. So we need to combine them all because we definitely need to get rid of narco trafficking as the fuel of those illegal groups and last but not least, i must make a reference on venezuela because, whats happening in venezuela is not only a threat to colombia, its a threat to the regional security. The dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro has been supporting terrorist groups in their territory and thats only comparable with what the world saw with the taliban regime to bring al qaeda inside afghanistan to plot against the United States and the world. Well, maduro is doing the same thing with terrorist groups in his territory, thats why i strongly support the bravery of interim president guido not only to offer all the collaboration with the colombian authorities so we identify where the criminals are and take them to justice. But the other thing is that the regime has brutalized the people in a way that is only comparable with what we saw with milosevic more than 20 years ago. So, its a moral duty to denounce and to do whatever is needed so that the dictatorship comes to an end. This is not a geopolitical debate. This is not a dispute between world powers. This is common sense. This is the defense of the values and principles that we share and that have been the cornerstone of our society. So thats why we need to do everything that is needed. And i welcome that this morning after the evidence that was shared by many countries in the United Nations general assembly, a new Investigation Panel has been formed to not only investigate, but be very assertive in the announcements that can be put against maduro and his inner circle. But the effects of that brutal dictatorship that latin america has seen in his recent history. Weve seen brothers and sisters in colombia. Its generating a stress, but were doing what is right. We have been able to attend with health care, vaccination, and we even recognize the citizens of colombia more than 25,000 children that were about to lose their nationality, the right to their nationality. Can this be sustainable . Obviously no. Having 5,000 migrants in colombia per day, thats sustainable, but we know at that for now, we need to provide attention and we need to call other countries to support the attention of the migrants so thats why in the one hand we support the venezuelan people and on the other hand were working with the biggest coalition ever seen in the region against a dictatorship with a diplomatic blockade, with the lima group, with the sanctions introduced by the american treaty of reciprocal assistance. Now i can say something, what colombia achieved growing above 3 , having such an abundant flow of investments at times where we are facing such a migration challenge, it only demonstrates that the colombian economy and its people are very resilient. We know that we must follow all these tracks that i mentioned today. Legality, plus entrepreneurship equals fairness for closing the social gaps. So im very happy as president of colombia to be here, to be able to share with you some of the things that were putting together for the future of our country, and i want to thank many of you who have looked at colombia, worked with colombia so that we are the nation that we are today. Thank you so much. [applaus [applause] thank you. So, thank you for your remarks. When you were previously living in washington, you didnt have a motorcade. Is it easier getting around with a motorcade now . I used to use the metro, so i miss the metro. Okay. So, lets talk about venezuela. Is it your view that maduro is likely to survive and do you have any views whether military intervention by the United States would be appropriate o