Dec. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Colombian lawmakers approved a proposal by Finance Minister Juan Carlos Echeverry to open the way for Colombia Telecomunicaciones SA to merge with Movistar, a unit of Telefonica SA, Spain’s largest phone company.

The merger of Telefonica’s local cellular phone unit and Coltel, a fixed-line phone company with declining sales, would boost competitiveness and help pay for “onerous” pension obligations of more than 17,000 former public employees, Echeverry said in an e-mailed statement late yesterday.

--Editors: Brendan Walsh, Richard Richtmyer

To contact the reporter on this story: Blake Schmidt in Bogota at bschmidt16@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Papadopoulos at papadopoulos@bloomberg.net