Colombia's River Revitalization Plan

The Magdalena River -- along with the Amazon, Parana and Orinoco -- is one of the great rivers of Latin America. From pre-colonial times until the early 20th century, the Magdalena served as the primary means of transportation, linking Colombia's mountainous interior with the coast. Existing roads were poor, rail was underdeveloped and air travel was nonexistent. Flat-bottomed riverboats (powered first by hand, then by steam and finally by diesel engines) became a primary means of transportation of both goods and passengers. However, due to certain characteristics of the river -- such as inadequate depth, shifting sand banks and erosion, as well as competition from other modes of transport -- scalability proved to be a challenge. By the mid-1950s, the river had peaked in importance, settling into a steady devolution that has continued to this day.

From the present perspective the Magdalena has lost nearly all of its economic relevance due to competition from roads and railways. Only around 1.5 million tons of cargo, or 0.6 percent of the national total, was shipped on the river in 2011. Around 90 percent of this cargo was liquid hydrocarbons and the remaining 10 percent was dry bulk, mostly coal. As part of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos' wider attempt to develop Colombia's transportation matrix and create more cost-competitive options for getting goods to market, his administration announced Nov. 3 that the government would invest 2.2 trillion pesos (roughly $1.2 billion) in restoring the navigability of the Magdalena River.

The project, which was first conceived in the late 1990s, will have some positive effects, such as lowering transportation costs for the energy sector, but the venture is no panacea. Fluvial transport will continue to account for a small percentage of overall freight in Colombia, and the country will still struggle with high transportation costs due to the overall inadequacy of existing infrastructure, namely its road and rail networks and intermodal facilities.

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