Dec. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Colombia will maintain pro-market policies even if President Alvaro Uribe, a favorite of investors, isn’t on the ballot in May elections, the head of the country’s central bank said.

“The market can be sure that any Colombian government is going to have a market friendly policy,” central bank chief Jose Dario Uribe, 51, said in an interview in his Bogota office. “I don’t see any possibility that the outcome of the next election will produce a new government that does not continue with a very long tradition of sound macroeconomic policy.”

Investors have expressed concern that, less than six months before the election, President Uribe hasn’t said whether he will seek a third consecutive term. In September, congress approved holding a national referendum on changing the constitution to allow the president, who enjoys a 68 percent approval rating after seven years on the job, to run again.

The country’s constitutional court, most of whose nine members are Uribe appointees, must now rule on the process.

A court ruling that blocks a third term, or a decision by Uribe not to run, “could be used as an opportunity to sell off assets” said Walter Molano, head of research BCP Securities in Greenwich, Connecticut.

“Foreign investors are taking for granted that Uribe will be re-elected and if that doesn’t happen they’ll be spooked,” Molano, whose parents are Colombian, said in a phone interview. ”Most investors think of Colombia and they think of Uribe. The country hasn’t done a good job selling its other attributes.”

Compromise Democracy

Colombia’s IGBC Index has increased almost ten fold since Uribe took office in 2002 while foreign direct investment hit record levels. The peso has strengthened more than 29 percent against the U.S. dollar.

Opponents of a third term argue another four-year turn in office would give Uribe too much influence over Colombia’s institutions in the long run and compromise the country’s democratic character.

Uribe, who already changed the constitution once so he could seek re-election in 2006, has championed policies that have endeared him to investors. These include slashing taxes, ramping up infrastructure spending and pushing back Marxist rebels that were behind one of the world’s highest kidnapping and murder rates when he took office in 2002.

Electoral Impact

“There are elections in some Latin American countries that have a strong effect on the economy, but that’s not the case in Colombia,” said central bank chief Uribe.

Uribe, who hails from the president’s home state of Antioquia, began his career at Colombia’s Banco de la Republica in 1993 before being named to head the bank in 2005. He was reappointed to a second four-year term earlier this year. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign.

If Uribe were to run again, 63 percent of Colombians said they would probably vote for him, according to a Gallup Colombia Ltda survey of 1,000 adults taken Oct. 27 to Nov. 3 and whose margin of error was plus or minus three points.

Without Uribe on the ballot, voters will likely choose between former Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos and former Medellin Mayor Sergio Fajardo, who are each favored by 25 percent of voters in the same survey. Another five candidates trail the frontrunners by about 10 percentage points.