Last Friday, April 26, 2024, the country learned unfortunate news for the national economy that left more than 800 workers unemployed: the closure of the General Motors (GM) Colmotores plant in Bogotá after almost seven decades of operation.
Given this, the president and director of GM South America, Santiago Chamorro, in an interview with the magazine WEEK He recently spoke about how the decision was made to end the operation in Colombian territory, what happened to its more than 800 employees and what they will do with the land that for years housed that emblematic automobile factory in Bogotá.
Firstly, Chamorro assures that the breaking point for deciding to close operations in the country was that a few years ago they invested 200 million dollars in setting up a metal parts stamping plant in a free zone in Colmotores and recently in selling the Chevrolet Joy, but the company finds itself with quite low production.
“We should be selling 40,000 and we have a production close to 11,000 units. The utilization of the plant is only 9% and that really makes it become an unsustainable issue and leads us to the sad decision to close operations,” he explained in this regard.
However, he warned that GM will continue its commercial operations in the country through its Chevrolet and Chevyplan brand dealerships.
Likewise, he referred to the current financial situation of GM Colmotores, of which he said that there is an increase in competitive pressure, with a lower production volume, with such a low use of production capacity (only 9%). “The financial results are not good and become unsustainable in the long term. For that reason, we made the decision not to continue with production, but commercially we are moving forward.”
The National Government and the closure decision
Chamorro clarified to the aforementioned media that the current social and political uncertainty in Colombia had nothing to do with the decision to close GM, since “It is a long-term issue.” In addition, he emphasized that they also made the decision to close their plant in Ecuador simultaneously, highlighting that both countries are going through different political and economic issues.
“It is a long-standing issue that has become more difficult year after year in terms of competitiveness,” he emphasized.
Regarding whether General Motors had meetings with the Petro Government before making the decision, the businessman said yes, as with previous governments, and highlighted that with the support of the current administration they managed to inaugurate the production of the Chevrolet Joy in the country a little less than two years ago.
“We really have industrial policies that brought us here. What happens is that these industrial policies become insufficient when compared with 20 years of balance, which we have in terms of scale.”
Likewise, he highlighted that the dialogue with this government and with previous ones has always been positive in which an attempt has been made to find a way to do things in the country’s industry.
Workers who lost their jobs
Regarding the workers who were affected by this decision, the president and director of GM South America announced that there are 550 people associated with the issue of manufacturing and plant operations who are the subject of this matter. In addition, he indicated that he made them an offer above and beyond the legal issues, which includes a job transition package, which wants to help them improve their profile so that they can get jobs in other companies and help those who are microentrepreneurs or have business plans. be.
“This package includes relocation to other companies in the market, which we are preparing to enter this labor market. I record that an immense majority have already signed their letters of mutual agreement and are taking advantage of these possibilities,” said Chamorro.
