ECLAC participates in a cycle of workshops organized by CORFO to train subnational authorities linked to the productive and territorial development of Chile

This Monday, January 9, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) participated in a cycle of workshops organized by the Chilean Production Development Corporation (CORFO), which is part of a training and education program Aimed at regional or subnational directors and deputy directors.

In this first of five meetings, the Economic Affairs Officer of ECLAC’s Productive and Business Development Division, Marco Dini, who is also coordinator of the productive and territorial development project carried out by ECLAC, together with the Undersecretariat of Regional and Administrative Development of Chile (SUBDERE), and which is financed and supported by the European Union. In this project, decentralization for productive development is one of the axes, for which it has collaborated to strengthen the capacities of regional governments for the design of territorial productive policies.

The ECLAC representative gave a talk on multilevel governance for economic development, with the purpose of reviewing the meaning and importance of this coordination approach, in addition to carrying out an analysis of the Chilean institutional context in terms of productive development and reviewing the challenges that the main public institutions linked to this issue have in terms of decentralization of productive development.

In this way, Dini began his presentation by talking about the panorama of economic uncertainty worldwide, as a scenario in which Chile has important challenges related to productivity and concentration.

In this line, he explained that the economy and productive capacity in terms of GDP of this country is strongly concentrated in the Metropolitan Region. However, he also explained that in terms of GDP per capita there is a process of convergence, since the regions that in 1996 had a lower GDP per capita are those that have registered a greater increase in this variable in the following 22 years, as is the case of the regions of La Araucanía, Los Lagos and Aysén, territories that have been reducing the gaps with the richest regions.

In this context, it was detailed that the Chilean institutional panorama in terms of productive development is well articulated, but scarcely coordinated with what is happening in the territories, despite the existence of more than 30 institutions dedicated to this subject. This situation has generated a scarce practice of inter-institutional work that does not allow thinking or building together, for example, with regional governments.

To this panorama must be added the strong degree of centralization of resources in the largest institutions, which generates a panorama of investments in productive development with marked differences between regions.

In this regard, ECLAC proposes a multi-stakeholder and multi-level coordination approach that allows for the strengthening of local and regional governments, for the design and implementation of regional productive development strategies, programs and projects.

An important milestone in the process of regionalization of productive development policies has been the election of regional governors. In this regard, CORFO can strengthen multilevel coordination, starting from reforming the action of national institutions, with a policy of a new development model that promotes inter-institutional coordination and focuses more on the achievement of goals and challenges than on the management of promotion instruments.

Likewise, it is essential that regional governments have greater autonomy and capacity in productive development, increasing, for example, the number of professionals, their competencies for the management of development instruments and the allocation of resources.

In general terms, multilevel coordination allows the different functions of each of the actors involved to be recognized and a dialogue is generated that not only grants greater power to one level over another, but also allows them to maintain their own workspace. and thus promote the decentralization of productive development policies.

This process implies a change in the power relations between the institutions, specifically in a transformation of the regional governments, which in Chile have been consolidating as a leading actor in regional productive development policies, from the popular election of the Governors. To this, CORFO must join in trying to direct this process in such a way that the final result is beneficial for Chilean institutions as a whole.

A tool that would make it possible to improve multilevel coordination in matters of economic development are the Regional Development Strategies, promoted by the GOREs. It is a collective construction with the territory that generates dialogue with local actors, communities, unions, academia, the private sector, etc., so that the scenario in which it is carried out is not subject to the continuity of a particular government.

For this, it is also necessary to reinforce the process of transferring powers from the national to the regional level. In this area, ECLAC is collaborating with CORFO and national entities such as SUBDERE and MINECON to reinforce the mechanism (per se transitory) of the Regional Productive Development Committees, as a step towards the construction of regional tools for the allocation and execution of resources, according to the orientation of the respective Regional Development Strategies.