On September 20 the trade agreement will be signed in Panama City after it has been ratified by the respective legislatures.
"We have everything finalized for the signing of the treaty with Colombia on Friday September 20," said Ricardo Quijano, Panama's Minister of Commerce and Industry.
He added that Panama has negotiated a good FTA, which will increase its presence in the South American country "with Panamanian products and even with products that will go from the Colon Free Zone, which bear some elaboration and yes they will carry a Panamanian certificate of origin".
Once the trade agreement is signed between the two countries tariffs that the South American nation excises on textiles and leather from the CFZ will be removed.
The information was confirmed by President Ricardo Martinelli, after a meeting with his Colombian counterpart. The president said that the trade agreement will be signed next week.
According to Martinelli, the tariff is applied only to countries that do not have an FTA with Colombia.
Businessmen from both countries are pay attention to the dialogue on tax information, tariffs on re-exportations from the CFZ, the Trade Agreement, and the electrical interconnection.
Larepublica.com reports: "Today sees the start of a new stage in the Colombian-Panamanian relationship with President Ricardo Martinelli's visit to Colombia, for a meeting with President Juan Manuel Santos".
The Minister of Commerce and Industry said that although Colombia is maintaining its excess tariffs on the CFZ, the FTA between the two countries is moving ahead.
"After starting negotiations for a free trade agreement (FTA) with Colombia, without having dealt with the request from businesses in the CFZ, the goal now is to raise a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO) in order to mitigate the effect of the Colombian excess tariffs", reported Prensa.com.
Colombia will continue to apply extra tariffs on re-exports coming from the CFZ for products which do not have certificates of origin and value-added processing.
After signing the agreement with Colombia, "We do not know how the [issue with] the CFZ ended up. There is a vacuum of information that we do not understand and I fear the worst. The silence, can be taken as a case of "no news is bad news", said Surse Pierpoint, president of the Association of Users of the Colon Free Zone.
Following the signing of the trade agreement, the government of Panama has not provided information about Colombia's treatment of the exports from the Colon Free Zone.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism of Colombia said that "the Colombian industry is the net winner" of this FTA, something that the Association of Users of the Colon Free Zone (CFZ) expressed its discontent over due to lack of information from the Panamanian authorities.
The contentious issue of the Colon Free Zone has been settled by agreeing to "certain provisions to regulate traffic of goods from third countries between the two nations."
From a press release by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry of Panama (ICIM):
The round of negotiations for the signing of the Free Trade Agreement between Panama and Colombia held from 28 to 31 May 2013 culminated in the early morning hours of Saturday June 1 in the City of Panama, allowing the closure of all outstanding issues.
Both nations failed to resolve issues such as the treatment of products in the Colon Free Zone, which means there will probably have to be an eighth round of negotiations.
"... The round that lasted for four days, dealt with technical issues such as trade and rules of origin procedures, access to markets for agricultural lists and issues related to customs administration and trade facilitation", reports Prensa.com.