PARIS: Colombia is set to become the 37th member of the OECD, the organisation's Secretary General Angel Gurria said.
"Hopefully, we are going to confirm this in the next few hours, we will ... have Colombia welcomed," Gurria told reporters in Paris.
The move, if confirmed, would take place a year and a half after the country's half-century civil war came to an end in 2016, when a peace deal with the country's biggest guerrilla, the FARC, was ratified.
The government has since been in talks with the last remaining rebel force, the ELN, to build on a ceasefire.
Joining the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) immediately raises a country's economic profile and opens the possibility for deeper international ties on economic, education and social matters.
Colombia formally launched a bid to join the OECD in 2013.
While this was prior to the ending of the war, the nation was already being led by President Juan Manuel Santos, who would go on to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in 2016.
Should the OECD accept Colombia's bid during its Friday meeting, the Latin American country's government could formally sign an accession treaty in Lithuania next week, a source from the Paris-based body said.
Colombia, a longtime ally of the United States, would become the third Latin American to join the OECD, after Chile and Mexico.
Other countries from the region, including Costa Rica and Brazil, have also applied for membership.


















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