Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim said he is looking towards Colombia’s oil industry, as the world’s richest man boosts infrastructure investments outside his home country.
“We are looking at opportunities in other countries that look interesting to us. In Colombia we know that there has been a lot of investment. The government is actively looking at the development of the oil industry and is promoting other investments,” Slim said in an interview with Bloomberg television aired on Thursday.
Colombia has experienced a boom in oil and mining investment since a 2002 U.S.-backed crackdown against leftist rebels. A flood of new players has emerged to take advantage of government policies meant to attract fresh cash.
The South American nation is also the world’s No. 5 coal exporter, but a series of mining explosions that killed dozens of workers over the last year have prompted calls for stricter government oversight at a time when Colombia’s mining sector is enjoying a mini-boom.
Colombia said on Wednesday it could extend a suspension of new requests for mining concessions for up to one year due to the recent accidents in the industry.
Ranked the world’s richest man by Forbes magazine, Slim spun off shares of his miner Frisco last month, betting on future demand for metals such as copper and gold as commodities prices around the world soar.
“I think the prices of primary products in the next years will have a bigger demand by a population that is getting out of poverty and is getting involved in the market,” Slim said in the interview, held in New York.
Frisco has said it will continue searching for more exploration land as it starts operations at five of its existing mines across Mexico during 2011 and 2012.
Slim told reporters two weeks ago that he is funneling 10 billion pesos into Frisco this year and another 13 billion pesos more into his infrastructure firm Ideal.
The entrepreneur also owns Swecomex, which provides engineering and platform construction services for the oil industry in Mexico, with state-run giant Pemex a key client. However, Slim has stayed away from costly and labor intensive deep water exploration in the Gulf of Mexico.
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