Competitiveness and Connectivity across the Colombian Urban System
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medium-to-high added value are typically produced in larger cities of the Andean highlands and then transported to maritime ports or to neighboring countries. These industrial exports include petroleum (which has a relatively low value per ton) and chemicals and metals, both of which have a relatively high value per ton. Agricultural exports make up about one-quarter of both the tonnage and the value of all exports. In keeping with the trend noted, the highest value agricultural goods such as flowers are typically transported by air from Bogotá,11 while bananas are produced primarily on the northern coast and are transported relatively small distances to the Atlantic ports. However, some agricultural export products appear to go against this trend—such as coffee12—because they originate in areas where transport is not an important export factor, and they are exported largely by isolated transport means. Import flows follow a similar pattern to exports, as coastal city imports tend to be lower value and larger tonnage. High-value imports are concentrated in the Andean cities, where freight is relatively specialized in industrial products, along with some cereals. Bogotá accounts for more than half of the value of imports to Colombia and a large portion of the 38 percent of imports that arrive by air (the large number of flights for the export of flowers has created opportunities for relatively low airfreight costs for imports). Seaports receive the greatest portion of imports in terms of tonnage, including inputs for fertilizers and other industrial processing. Buenaventura is the busiest seaport for imports, with one-third of the national import load. In general, in all regions, the volume of cargo imported exceeds that of cargo exported. The only exception is in the Coffee Region, precisely because of the high volume of coffee exports. Domestic freight flows. Domestic freight flows encounter three marked bottlenecks: (1) heavy reliance on highways, where freight is predominantly shipped in relatively large semi-trailers; (2) structural imbalance in freight flows, with the coastal cities as net shippers and the large Andean highlands cities as net receivers; and (3) high logistics costs permeating all transport modes because of limited logistics and intermodal infrastructure.13 Each of these bottlenecks is discussed in detail in the following sections. Domestic freight transport is very reliant on highways. Survey data from a governmental 2008 freight study indicate that 70,601 tons were moved per kilometer of road and that every ton was transported 399 kilometers on average.14 It is possible to infer that the average load per truck for 13.8 million trips was 12.8 tons (including empty trips).