On Thursday, September 12, a first meeting was held to advance a regional agenda for digital productive development. The meeting was organized by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), through the Productive and Business Development Division, with the purpose of sharing experiences and different proposals among the digital clusters of the region and defining a roadmap to deepen the digital productive transformation of Latin America and the Caribbean.
The meeting, moderated by Alejandro Patiño, ECLAC’s economic affairs officer, included welcoming remarks by the Division’s director, Marco Llinás. In his speech, Llinás briefly contextualized the panorama of the three traps of low productivity and economic growth in which Latin America and the Caribbean find themselves. He also underlined the importance of closing the current gap in the region regarding the adoption of digital technologies and expressed ECLAC’s interest in working on an agenda that addresses these challenges on the digital frontier.
To this end, Llinás proposed two alternative lines of work that aim, on the one hand, to strengthen digital penetration in the productive and cluster sectors and, on the other, to reinforce the offer of the digital clusters in the region. In relation to this last point, “we find it interesting to work on a regional agenda that allows us to strengthen the offer of technologies by the digital economy clusters in the region. In other words, to work on an agenda with digital clusters to strengthen our value offer,” added Llinás.
Among the points raised, the relevance of digitalization for productive development was addressed, as well as digital transformation as an integral part of productive development policies, and the work carried out by the Cluster Initiatives Platform and other Territorial Productive Articulation Initiatives (IAPT) was presented to georeference and give visibility to these initiatives, where digital clusters have a fundamental role as vehicles for a regional agenda of digital productive transformation.
Marco Dini, economic affairs officer of the Division, added that this work has been underway since June of this year through various interviews with digital clusters from countries such as Costa Rica, Ecuador, Argentina and Colombia. On this basis, a preliminary diagnosis was carried out and common areas of interest were identified. This allowed us to define three potential key focuses that guided the virtual debate:
- Increase the adoption of digital technologies by other clusters and production chains, especially those prioritized under productive development policies
- Strengthening the supply of digital technologies by the region’s digital economy clusters
- Increase the visibility of digital economy cluster initiatives and enhance reciprocal interaction
With the presence of different digital clusters from countries such as Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba and Mexico, a space for conversation was created to share experiences and proposals around these three central focuses to build this agenda. In this sense, the participating promoters took the opportunity to present their ideas regarding the proposed focuses that can be addressed by the Platform, such as the need for training and work in the network of digital clusters.
Finally, Marco Llinás insisted on the hope of being able to define a roadmap that will promote work on the materialization of this digital transformation agenda, within the framework of the Digital Agenda for Latin America and the Caribbean (eLAC)), highlighting the interest raised by the first objective presented by ECLAC. Dini also highlighted the formation of the working group at the meeting and called for help to expand this network and continue to enable these connections both with the clusters present as well as with others that have not yet registered on the Platform.
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