The secret to moving project cargo in Colombia is improvisation, companies such as Kuehne + Nagel say. Although the size of France, Germany and Britain combined, Colombia has only 102,526 miles of road, and few of these are more than two lanes, making it a challenge to move cargo wider than 13 feet.

Ports lack cranes able to move components weighing more than 100 metric tons. Transport companies are sometimes forced to create their own thoroughfares through muddy jungle with bulldozers. And Colombia’s terrain, which ranges from mountains to jungle, is daunting.

“Here you have to work with what there is,” said Hector Suarez, project manager at Kuehne + Nagel in Colombia. “We are used to overcoming obstacles — and there is a great invisible infrastructure that is the creativity and experience of our engineers.”

Colombia is in the process of improving its road network, however.

The International Finance Corp., the investment arm of the World Bank, is the financial adviser for the $2.5 billion Ruta del Sol, a 1,000-kilometer corridor between Bogota and Santa Marta that will cut through tough mountainous terrain and is considered by many to be a project second only to the Panama Canal in scale and importance. Construction is scheduled to start this year.

Construction is also under way on the La Linea tunnel, which will make traveling between central Colombia and the Pacific far more efficient.

Colombia is also seeking to build a 652-mile rail line at a cost of $440 million, although the concession was held up last year by accusations that Spanish investors tried to bribe officials to win the project bid. The ports of Buenaventura, Barranquilla and Santa Marta are all undergoing modernization, and the government aims to build new terminals in Tribuga, in the Choco region, and in the Golfo de Uraba, in the Antioquia region.

Colombia has also made headway in reducing bureaucratic headaches. “Customs in Colombia has also changed a lot,” said Arndt Droegemueller, BDP Project Logistics’ director of business development in South America. “The processes are very easy, and customs is no longer a problem for investors who are bringing equipment to Colombia.”

By: Leticia Lozano