Pick your port: Colombia earmarks millions to improve its main ports. A new one could be on the way, too.

As the only South American country with beaches on the Atlantic and Pacific, Colombia's maritime sector serves as the backbone of the country's export base. Yet of the more than 200 ports across the country, the five primary facilities are jammed as demand for Colombian goods remains healthy in the Americas and Asia.

Logistics companies have complained, and the government has taken note. The Uribe administration will spend US$156 million to expand the country's port system over the next nine years. It might also build a new port. The vast majority of trade leaves from the two Pacific ports of Buenaventura and Tumaco and the Caribbean ports of Barranquilla, Cartagena and Santa Marta. Most of the investments will focus on those ports.

"The plan will see necessary investments in the efficiency, security and capacity of the country's port system" says Andres Gallego, Colombia's transportation minister. At the moment, the country's five main ports have the capacity to move 135 million tons of goods per year, and expansion will raise that figure to 175 million tons.

Colombia has long relied on oil exports to fuel its economy, although the government is scrambling to find new reserves, many of which are running dry. In the meantime, the country is looking for export alternatives to keep its revenue flows healthy.

"We're studying how we can increase our capacity to export coal," Gallego says. Coal, which requires special infrastructure to ship, has grown in importance over the past five years, rising to become the country's second-largest export abroad, overtaking coffee. Colombia's largest export is still oil.

Expansion plans aside, the government says that the country needs a new port just the same. "We are studying sites for a new port and in particular, we've been looking at the naval base of Malaga," Gallego says. A new port in Malaga, on the Pacific, would relieve the pressure on the port of Buenaventura, which has little room to expand.

Shipping and logistics companies couldn't agree more. "With the exception of Barranquilla, I look at these ports and just don't see how they can be expanded much more. There's simply no room," says Carlos Aragon, general director of the Colombian shipper Frontier Maritime Agency. "If in five years there are no new ports, we'll hit the limits of these ports."

Building a port in Malaga, however, won't be easy. The city is in a very underdeveloped swathe of Colombia lacking in infrastructure. And the area is sparsely inhabited. That means there are too few people around to create the labor pool needed to build a port. Yet the government had better make it happen if Colombia is to continue to supply red-hot Asian demand for Latin American products.

"Undoubtedly, we need another port, and we need it sooner rather than later, but I'm not sure if the government is taking this seriously;' says Arag6n. "This is a huge undertaking and one has to wonder where the money is going to come from."

While Malaga may have all the land in the world to build a port, Buenaventura needs money to make the best of what it already has. Sitting on the country's Pacific coast, it is Colombia's largest port, accounting for just over half of the country's trade. An estimated 5,000 people work in and around the port, helping bring in cereals, corn and wheat, while sending out coffee, coal and sugar.

"We've seen steady growth in traffic at the port, and both access by road and access by sea need to be expanded" says Victor Gonzalez, the president of the Buenaventura port authority. Port officials want to build a road exclusively for heavy trucks and deepen the port's channels, Gonzalez says.

The new investment will help beef up security, too. The port needs funds to crack down on arms and drug shipments. In the past, Buenaventura was home to violent clashes between drug cartels, guerrillas and paramilitaries. Four years ago, truck drivers staged protests over security conditions on the way to the port, where they have been victims of roadblocks by armed men demanding money. Killings and kidnappings were far too common.

Massive decline. Those protests must have worked, as the Uribe administration has stepped up security patrols on nearby highways to protect the truck drivers. "With the security policies of this government, more police and army on the roads, we've seen the crime on the roads leading in to Buenaventura decline massively," Gonzalez says.

If Buenaventura is busting at the seams, Barranquilla, up on the Caribbean coast, has plenty of room to grow. "The port of Barranquilla could easily double its capacity with very little investment" says Enrique Carvajales, commercial manager for the port. While Barranquilla is further away from Colombia's major cities such as Bogota, Cali and Medellin, and even if it doesn't have direct access to Asian markets, it's not without advantages--including just plain convenience. "If a shipment is to go to any Central American destination, the United States, or the Caribbean, the shipper will always look first to the ports on the Atlantic coast," Carvajales says.