COLOMBIA Law and Practice Contributed by: Maria Carolina Pardo, Ciro Meza, Angélica Navarro and Carlos Ignacio Arboleda, Baker McKenzie
Baker & McKenzie Carrera 11 #79-35 Piso 9 Bogotá D.C. 110221 Colombia Tel: +57 601 6341500 Email: Natalia.isaza@bakermckenzie.com Web: www.bakermckenzie.com
1. Digital Economy 1.1 Key Challenges
curity, as ensuring compliance with data protec - tion laws, particularly in relation to cross-border data transfers and cyberthreats, remains a sig - nificant challenge considering that Colombia is a consent-based jurisdiction where “legitimate interest” is in principle not valid ground for data processing. Exceptions to the “consent-based” approach are limited and refer to the processing of personal data for the protection of health or life of the data subject, certain financial transac - tions and processing by competent authorities. Foreign authorities are not deemed competent for the purposes of this exception. The rapid advancement of technologies such as AI and blockchain has compelled the govern - ment to seek regulatory measures. Since 2022, seven bills addressing various aspects of AI have been submitted to Congress. Nonetheless, Congress has not yet passed regulation on AI matters as of the date of this publication. Finally, the definition of “telecommunications network or service” is broad and challenging to interpret for emerging services such as AI, blockchain and cloud computing. Colombian regulations require local entities that supply (ie, invoice) telecom networks or services to be reg -
There are no laws or legislation that specifi - cally regulate the digital economy in Colombia. However, many of the statutes regulate certain aspects of it, namely the Telecommunications, Media and Technology Statue (Law 1341); the Law on E-Commerce (Law 527); the Consumer Protection Statute (Law 1480), recently amend - ed by Law 2439 of 2024; and the Law for the Protection of Personal Data (Law 1381). Fur - thermore, on 1 January 2024, new requirements and tax regulations applicable to digital services were introduced. The main challenges for Colombia in the imple - mentation of different digital economies have been identified by the Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications (the “ITC Ministry”) in the National Digital Strategy (NDS) for 2023–26. Challenges include enhancing internet connectivity and infrastructure, promot - ing its use, especially by small businesses, and providing public education programmes for the implementation of new technologies. From a legal perspective, it is important to high - light the regulation on data privacy and cyberse -
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