Competitive positioning of agri-food products from the department of Santander, Colombia in the European Union

Abstract

The study assesses the performance of exportable products from the agri-food sector of the department of Santander, Colombia, in the European Union market, in order to have a perception of the use of the free trade agreement that Colombia has with that economic bloc. The objective is to analyze the competitive positioning of Santander's agri-food products in the European Union and for this purpose, the behavior of the value of exports, behavior of the participation of exports in the market, behavior of the trade balance, and the behavior of the relative trade balance are taken as variables. As a unit of analysis, agri-food products included between chapters 1 to 21 of the harmonized tariff system with a 6-digit level of disaggregation are taken, the analysis of the variables is done in a range of 10 years, from 2014 to 2023, years after the entry into force of the FTA. It is observed that although there has been an increase in the diversity of exports as the exportable supply increases, the values exported by the department of Santander in agri-food products to the European Union are low, and very few products have managed to consolidate themselves in that market. In general, there was no evidence of a constant increase over the years covered in the study, in the total exported by the agri-food sector of the department of Santander to the economic bloc, but the trend is towards variations of high and low peaks.