BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia is looking for its economy to recover in the second half of this year for the country to reach zero or above-zero growth for the whole of 2009, Finance Minister Oscar Zuluaga said.

Speaking to the Reuters Latin American Investment Summit, Zuluaga said he expected economic growth of 1.3 percent for next year as long as exports recover and commodity prices rebound from the impact of the global financial crisis.

Colombia, one the top five economies in Latin America, has seen its economic growth slow sharply and most analysts believe it will fall into recession in the first quarter of this year for the first time since an economic crisis in 1999.

The gross domestic product contracted 0.7 percent in the last quarter of 2008 compared with a year earlier.

"The first quarter, with the figures that we have, was bad," Zuluaga said. "What we are looking for in the rest of the year, in particular the second half, is for a recovery that will allow us to have growth at zero or above zero."

Colombia's current situation is very different from the crisis of 1999 when the economy contracted 4.3 percent, billions of dollars in reserves were lost and interest rates soared to historic highs.

The government is currently carrying out counter-cyclical measures with more public spending, ample liquidity and repeated interest rate cut to tackle the worldwide financial meltdown.

Zuluaga said foreign debt financing would cover a large part of the current account deficit, which is estimated at between 3.7 percent and 3.8 percent of the GDP this year compared with 2.8 percent last year.

The consolidated fiscal deficit is expected to widen to between 2.5 percent and 2.8 percent of the GDP and could grow more if local governments spend more, he said. The government had estimated an initial target of 1.8 percent of GDP.

In 2008, the consolidated deficit was just 0.1 percent after local governments did not exercise their full budgets.

The central government deficit fiscal is estimated at 3.7 percent to 3.8 percent this year of GDP based on 0.5 percent economic growth compared with 2.3 percent of GDP deficit in 2008, Zuluaga said.

The minister said he expected several public companies would take advantage of the appetite for foreign debt in the market after the government recently reopened a global bond. State oil company Ecopetrol ECO.CN could issue up to $1 billion in debt this year, he said.