Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos said the peace deal with the Farc rebel group will boost economic growth and will enable the country to rebuild its social fabric.

“War is always more costly than peace,” he said in an interview with the BBC.

Santos and Farc leader Timoleon Jimenez, known as Timochenko, will sign a historic peace deal later on Monday (local time).

But it will take a long time for Colombian society to recover from more than five decades of conflict, he said.

“We could have grown between 2 percent and 3 percent more per year for the past 23 years,” Santos said.

He also said the conflict has also had a profound impact on Colombian society.

“We have even lost our compassion, which is the ability to feel some kind of pain for others.

“A country at war for 50 years is a country that has destroyed many of its values,” said President Santos.

BDST: 1231 HRS, SEP 26, 2016
SR