What we are lacking

Column La Tarde
Fundación Kíos

What we are lacking


Pereira is a privileged city, and it contains, in just one place, the strengths and weaknesses of a country like Colombia that struggles everyday getting better.


In this town, a extend variety of economic dynamics concurs to turn the city into an attractive region’s epicenter for domestic and foreign investments. Its agricultural past, which includes increasingly trade dynamics, is combined with traditional industry activities and a growing service sector, especially tourism. Geographically located in a strategic point where key development areas for the country merged, Pereira must assume, perhaps as preparation for the sesquicentennial festivities, the true role that their leaders have imagined for it.


We must invest, first, in infrastructure, not only to strengthen the comparative advantages of the tourism industry today, but also, as one example, to refurbish the cluster of textiles.


Downtown Pereira is picturesque, which could bring a sort of added value to the foreigner tourist. It's messy, hard to transit, packed with street vendors, noisy, and dirty. Tourists may enjoy picturesque for once, but they will remember disarray forever.

We must invest, also, in security, to create a favorable and stable environment for investors from the rest of the country and abroad.

Correspondingly, the allocation of resources to science and technology is a must do. Within the region, the private institutions improvement on education supply is indispensable. At the same time, we should stimulate the youth so they comprehend the key value of been educated, that only skillful societies with citizens who know to handle appropriately new technologies, will overcome the challenges posed by the coming decades.

Likewise, Pereira should improve its civic culture. The goodness of its people is reflected not only in being good hosts, or been cheerful and friendly citizens. The tourist must feel comfortable while in Pereira. Vehicular traffic in the city is messy and sometimes chaotic, not only because of the infrastructure’s deficit existence, but also because of the drivers and pedestrians’ low civility. Parked vehicles on the streets in forbidden places, and pedestrians who do not respect the crosswalks are some of the factors that can only be improved through an enhancement civic culture process.

The combination of institutional efforts with the allocation and responsible use of significant public resources to do enduring investments, the citizens belief that Pereira can become a center of sustainable development for the country and, above all, the recognition of the importance of rebuilding a culture of peace, focusing citizens’ potential towards educational and cultural efforts, will make of Pereira the pearl its citizens have always imagined.