Hello Project Hope community, I hope you are all doing well, and that your week has been very productive. Today he wants to talk about a particular issue, how the economy is moving in Colombia, a country where I've been living for two and a half years, specifically in its capital, Bogotá.

Since March 23rd of this year the city by orders of the mayor's office literally paralyzed the city with an absolute quarantine, nobody enters or leaves every for almost two months, only for essential things (food, medicines, pay public services, etc). And that's how the economy deteriorated little by little, until some businesses began to go bankrupt and with them a lot of unemployment. But beyond this, imports also decreased, it was to be expected, a large part of imports were paralyzed.

In order to understand what I mean, we must consider that most of the imported products come from China, which is the main protagonist in economic matters, but not only in that field, but it was where the whole pandemic started, a situation that has undoubtedly managed to affect at a global level not only in health matters but also in the economy.

With what was mentioned above, it is easy to imagine that all the ports in this country where I live stopped their activities and imports of everything (raw materials, materials, all kinds of products) were suspended, which brought about several consequences, some good but sometimes not so good.

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Increased production in the country

As it is to be noticed, if something is always scarce, the human being will look for either the possibility of replacing that which is missing by something else, in case it is possible, or simply to produce it.

In this particular case there was part of the national industry that was activated and began the production of those products that were no longer being imported, allowing a relative increase in productivity in the country with the consequent satisfaction of that demand for that product that was needed, and collaborating with the national economy. It is possible that this will continue and that those companies that took advantage of the situation to become active or to start production of a certain item will remain even beyond the end of this whole situation.

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Scarcity of raw materials

Dependence on foreign raw materials, or on some chemicals needed to process other products, has complicated the picture a bit, but a solution must be found to this, since a country rich in materials should not be importing everything to produce what the population needs, yet it happens.

The absence of some products has been felt, which makes the few of these that are circulating in the market increase in price, and in the end those who pay the increase are the consumers, not only for paying more but for having to dedicate more time than necessary to be able to obtain it.

So even though in this country, Colombia, the economy has been reactivating for two weeks now, slowly, with the opening of many businesses and fewer restrictions, the truth is that the shortage of some things is being felt, also accompanied by a sustained increase in prices in practically everything.

I will wait to see what happens in the rest of the year in terms of both the economy and health. I hope that there are no new outbreaks of Covid that will lead the government to return to absolute quarantine, and that this escalation in price increases will not continue, because economic instability can be accentuated with all the consequences that this brings.

Stay safe.

Have an excellent weekend, everyone.