Authorities from Argentina exchanged experiences at ECLAC on productive development policies aimed at territories

National and provincial authorities of Argentina and representatives of the Chilean Production Development Corporation (CORFO) agreed today on the need to deepen the territorial dimension to promote productive policies and a new development model in their respective countries, during a meeting held this Tuesday, August 9, at ECLAC headquarters in Santiago, Chile.

The peer-to-peer exchange workshop on productive development and territory in Argentina featured opening remarks by Mario Cimoli, Interim Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), and Mercedes Marcó del Pont, Secretary of Strategic Affairs of Argentina, and a presentation by Tomás Canosa, SME Undersecretary of the Ministry of Economy, Productive Development and Agriculture of Argentina.

During his speech, the highest authority of ECLAC highlighted the importance, in the current geopolitical context, of re-implementing industrial and technological policies in Latin America and the Caribbean. What the 2008-2009 financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine taught us, she said, is the need to implement industrial policies. If its relevance was debated before, today there is evidence of its importance, Cimoli said.

The Executive Secretary ai of ECLAC emphasized that the territory plays a decisive role in industrial and technological policies. “Without thinking about the territory, there is no possibility of development. The industrial and technological policy is expressed in the territory. This is determining and crucial,” Cimoli said, adding that it is necessary “to be able to have a profound debate on this issue where the specificity of each area is linked to a regional strategy. That is the objective of this meeting, to share strategic visions and good policy practices”.

Finally, the senior United Nations official announced that during the next session of ECLAC, to be held from October 21 to 26 in Argentina, there will be a day dedicated to the national reality, “where we will precisely discuss the role of territorial, gender and science and technology policies”.

Mercedes Marcó del Pont, recently appointed Secretary of Strategic Affairs of Argentina, stressed that “this meeting highlights the vocation of our government to continue and improve industrial and technological policy with that territorial perspective that is essential to guarantee harmonious development” and He added that “productive issues have an impact on national development. There is no possible development of a society if it does not occur with a harmonization of the situations of the territories and without social inclusion”.

Subsequently, senior representatives from 10 provinces, mostly from northern Argentina, intervened: San Juan, Misiones, Corrientes, Salta, Catamarca, Santiago del Estero, Chaco, Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica and the South Atlantic Islands, La Rioja and Tucumán.

In addition to highlighting the role of ECLAC as a space for technical-political dialogue, those present raised the need to provide greater tools for multilevel coordination, enhance the identity and operational capacity of the regions, which requires a larger scale of intervention , and incorporate the provincial and intraprovincial dimension to multilevel coordination for the design and implementation of productive development policies.

Reference was also made to the fact that productive policy increasingly requires a comprehensive vision, which implies coordination of business, infrastructure, science and technology, and gender policies, among others. In this line, it becomes necessary the emergence of work agendas and ideas on issues that can balance the existing disparities between the formal and informal economies in the region, as indicated.

The second part of the workshop was marked by the presentation of instruments to promote territorial productive development, carried out by the Deputy Manager of Networks and Territories of CORFO, Alicia Olivares, who, among other topics, referred to the need to reflect on the impulse that it is delivered to the local and regional sphere from the productive, geographical and cultural heterogeneity of Chile, and on a decentralization that gives greater decision-making power to the regions.

Both the authorities of Argentina and Chile agreed that it is key to support the territories so that the regional development strategy is robust and there are more flexible instruments and programs that have metrics to assess the relevance and efficiency in the use of resources and the financing.

Regarding the steps to follow, ECLAC emphasized having an agenda to continue learning from the experience of each province in Argentina, with multilevel strategic participation and the ability of the regions to dialogue with each other and establish a visible policy, of so that spaces can be generated so that the Latin American provinces have an instance of meeting and working together, strengthening the national, subnational and local dimension.

The workshop was organized within the framework of the project “Productive development and spatial heterogeneity in Latin America: institutions and capacity building in the programming and implementation of regional production policies”, coordinated by ECLAC together with the Ministry of Economy, Productive Development and Agriculture of Argentina, the Undersecretary of Regional and Administrative Development of Chile and the Planning Department of Colombia, with the support and financing of the European Union.