The arrival to the Presidency of Colombia of Gustavo Petro opened the possibility not only of reestablishing diplomatic ties with Venezuela, beginning with the appointment of ambassadors, but also of fully reopening the 2,219-kilometer border, closed to vehicle traffic since August 2015 when Maduro, under the pretext of an operation against alleged paramilitaries, expelled more than 20,000 Colombians from the Venezuelan side.
Petro and Maduro have put their foot on the accelerator and the Venezuelan president stated on September 9 that he calculates that with the reopening of the border "we could reach 2,000 million dollars of commercial exchange", while the Colombian ambassador in Caracas , Armando Benedetti, predicted that it will reach 10,000 million dollars in a period that he did not specify.
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