ECLAC participates in a regional meeting aimed at strengthening the territorial articulation of the Regional Development Agencies of Peru

This Friday, March 24, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) participated in the second day of a regional meeting organized to help strengthen the territorial articulation of the Regional Development Agencies (ARD) of Peru, as part of of the project “Identification, awareness and incidence for the consolidation of the ARD in Peru”, executed by the Decentralization Secretariat of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers of that country, and with the advice of the European Union, through the support of the German development cooperation implemented by GIZ and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation.

This project seeks to contribute to the sustainability process of the ARDs in Peru, as well as to the construction of Regional Innovation Development Strategies (EDIR), through the systematization and critical analysis of the experience of the seven agencies participating in the project: “Sustainable economic development and promotion of SMEs at the subnational level”, co-financed by the European Union and the German government. For this, it has the support of the Latin American Center for Rural Development (Rimisp) as a project partner and its ally CEDEPAS Norte for the preparation and implementation of these regional exchanges scheduled between February and April 2023.

The activity was focused on promoting a regional exchange for the ARDs that are located in the regions of Cusco, Apurímac and Ayacucho in Peru, and had the purpose of promoting inter-institutional articulation between the ARDs to strengthen the work and public-private link between the regions.

In the instance, the Economic Affairs Officer of ECLAC’s Productive and Business Development Division, Marco Dini, spoke about productive development, competitiveness and innovation in Latin America, delivering a series of methodological reflections on policy governance models regional productive.

The ECLAC representative focused his presentation on five elements that influence the generation of regional coordination instances for productive development, as is the case of the ARDs in Peru. The first of them is related to the construction of a joint vision between the public and private sectors, academia, civil society, etc., to reach agreements and generate synergies that deliver shared priorities and that allow coherent actions for the productive development of a given area. territory.

The second element is related to the three main functions of an ARD. First, the strategic function linked to building a broad political consensus on priorities and guidelines. In this area, the ARDs should play a supporting role to the regional government, which is the entity responsible for designing the strategy. Secondly, the ARD should be in charge of the implementation of the policies and programs that emerge from the strategy. This requires identifying who are the actors and institutions that work in the territory, what competencies they have, how they can collaborate to generate synergies that facilitate achieving the prioritized strategic goals. Finally, the execution function, which is mainly related to guaranteeing the correct use of public resources invested in productive development policies and programs.

The third factor that affects coordination for productive development refers to the powers and capacities that an ARD should have. The former concern the powers recognized by the agencies, while the latter allude to their resources that must be guaranteed in a timely manner and in sufficient quantity.

The fourth element is linked to stability and flexibility. The first is key to generating transformations that are projected in the medium-long term, beyond political cycles (public and private), guaranteeing the continuity of policies. In relation to the second, there must be adaptability to the evolution of the context and the ability to learn from experience and incorporate learning into practice.

Finally, the ECLAC representative discussed how to promote the ARDs, which depends, to a certain extent, on the sociopolitical context of a country and on inter-institutional coordination, to reorganize productive development policies. In this sense, the role of the national government is key to systematize national and international experiences and learning, create networks between regional actors and support the most vulnerable realities.

In relation to these issues, ECLAC promotes the development of the capacities of subnational governments in territorial productive development, through the Facility Territorial project, implemented in Argentina, Chile and Colombia, together with institutions specialized in territorial economic development, such as the Secretariat of Industry and Productive Development in Argentina, the Undersecretary of Regional Development in Chile (SUBDERE) and the National Department of Planning in Colombia (DNP).