Portugal chosen for project “because it offered best guarantees”
Colombian foreign minister Luis Gilberto Murillo has announced that Portugal’s government will help his country issue passports and build a factory for the purpose.
Murillo said that the new passport model ‘implies greater public participation, but also sovereignty over the data’ of those applying for the travel document.
“In this sense, the government of Portugal was chosen (…) because it offered the best guarantees, especially in the cooperation package, which is a combination of the implementation of the passport issuing model”, he said.
Murillo emphasised that issuing the document “is guaranteed” and that citizens “can rest assured”, since Portugal will help install infrastructure that will allow the Colombian National Press to take over the issuing process in full from 2025.
The minister added that the company Thomas Greg and Sons, responsible for issuing Colombian passports for the last 17 years, will continue to issue the documents until September 2025.
His predecessor, Álvaro Leyva, ended the contract with Thomas Greg and Sons, which still had three years left to run.
After unsuccessfully reaching a conciliation agreement with the Colombian government in December, the company announced a lawsuit against the Colombian state for 117 billion pesos (€25.5 million).
The government suspended the tender in February after the Public Prosecutor’s Office provisionally removed Álvaro Leyva due to possible irregularities in the tender process.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro then appointed Murillo, Colombia’s ambassador to the United States, and now comes the ‘solution’, freeing the country of an expensive lawsuit.
Source material: LUSA
