On Thursday afternoon, the presidents of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, and of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, held a bilateral meeting at the Carondelet Palace.

The meeting would discuss border, immigration, security and defense issues; infrastructure and connectivity; environmental and commercial.

Gustavo Petro was the only president to attend Noboa’s presidential inauguration. He arrived late and entered as General Assembly President Henry Kronfle intervened.

Smiling, Daniel Noboa and his wife arrived at the Carondelet Palace

As they left parliament, the Colombian president stated that they would coordinate how to jointly tackle the drought.

“I believe that together we can mitigate the consequences of the climate crisis in our region,” the Colombian president added.

This drought has led to daily power outages in Ecuador since the end of October that initially lasted as long as four hours to ration electricity, given the shortage of generation from the country’s main hydropower plants.

To resolve this situation, now-former President Guillermo Lasso traveled to Bogotá in late October to meet Petro and persuade Colombia to expand electricity exports to Ecuador, something Peru later did.

Precisely on this topic, Petro reiterated his promise to export 10 gigawatt hours per day to Ecuador.

Foreign Ministers Gabriela Sommerfeld and Álvaro Leyva also took part in the meeting.

It was reported that the binational cabinet of Colombia and Ecuador will seek to consolidate 79 agreed commitments.

“Good relations within Latin America must be maintained to the maximum, regardless of ideologies or political positions,” he added. (JO)