I arrived at Medellin International Airport coming from Boston excited because it was a first trip to Colombia. Why this excitement? I always heard about this country. First, the bad image: the worldwide news of the drug cartels, the guerrillas, violence, kidnapping, lack of development, failure of institutions and the lost of the control of Government and regions to illegality, which characterized the country in the 80's and 90's. People feared to go to Colombia.

In the last years we started receiving good news from several sources about the turnaround that the country and major cities went through. I heard about the wonderful geography and had a taste of the enthusiasm of Colombian people, interacting and teaching to interchange students from EAFIT University of Medellin studying at University of Sao Paulo, in Brazil.

After conversations with business people, taxi drivers, politicians, associations, universities and other sources, I could come up with an opinion to share with China Daily readers. Colombia just came out of an 8 year Government that started the process of giving back the country to the organized society after decades of difficulties. The major efforts were related to security, with a strong battle against illegality. In parallel with these efforts, efficient Government management, organizing and building strong institutions, attraction of international investments, promotion of business associations, discussion forums and efforts to improve exports via building bi-lateral agreements with important markets. From a country that people had fear to go, towards a now touristic country…

A planning process was done discovering the competences of each region, coming up with differentiated regional policies and agencies for development, with attention to the articulation of the agents. This was done promoting competitiveness based on the traditional clusters approach (bundle of integrated companies with a regional delimitation). Government also worked with investments in education and efforts to attract back to the country the Colombian talents. The Colombian Coffee is one of the most beautiful examples, with farmers' coordination, investments in promotion, in marketing channels and others. I invite the readers to visit their web site (www.juanvaldez.org).