Foreign direct investment in Colombia could reach $17 billion this year, Finance Minister Juan Carlos Echeverry said on Thursday, calling on industrialists to "pray" that the central bank boosts dollar purchases to stem gains in the currency.
Investment in the Andean nation's oil and mining industries has reached record levels in the past several years, bolstering the value of the peso, which has been one of the strongest gaining currencies among 152 tracked by Reuters.
"If God is great, let the central bank buy more dollars; praise the Lord, pray, go to mass," Echeverry joked to industrialists at a conference in the coastal city of Cartagena. "The exchange rate hurts a lot, but it's incredible that during an international crisis our problem is the appreciation of the peso."
A global crisis would "normally" devalue the currency to as much as 2,200 per dollar, he said. The peso was trading at 1,788.55 versus the dollar on Thursday.
A military crackdown on drug-funded insurgent groups has made Colombia much more attractive to investors, once fearful of visiting the nation as Marxist FARC rebels and paramilitary groups bombed corporate installations and kidnapped workers. Even as the government trumpets the foreign investment figures, Echeverry again pressured the central bank to be more aggressive in its handling of monetary policy in a bid to ease gains in the peso of up to 8 percent so far this year.