BOGOTA, (Reuters) – Colombia wants a permanent opening of its border with Venezuela and will not allow further temporary crossings, the foreign minister said, after tens of thousands of Venezuelans streamed in during the weekend to buy items scarce in their own country.
Facing an unprecedented economic crisis, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government has allowed citizens to cross into Colombia the past two weekends after closing the border last year in a crackdown on smuggling.
The next border opening should be permanent, Colombian Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin said late on Monday.
“We have taken the decision that there will not be another session like the ones over the past two weekends,” she told journalists. “We will work for the opening, the next opening, to be definitive.”
With many Venezuelans traveling from afar to reach the border, about 167,000 have taken the opportunity to shop for basics such as toilet paper, cooking oil, flour and baby supplies in border cities like Cucuta.
Venezuela closed the crossings along the two countries’ 2,219-kilometer (1,378-mile) land border in August 2015 in what Maduro described as an effort to combat smuggling of subsidized Venezuelan products to Colombia.
