The XV Ibero-American Business Meeting took place last Wednesday in the city of Cuenca, Ecuador, within the framework of the XXIX Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government. Under the motto “Innovation, inclusion, sustainability and employability: The Ibero-America of the future”, The event brought together nearly 1,000 business leaders from more than twenty countries to discuss the development challenges of the region, with special emphasis on the inclusion of vulnerable sectors, such as people with disabilities.
on the panel “Public View: economic perspectives of Latin America”which had the participation of organizations such as the OECD, CAF, the European Union and the Institute of Economic Studies, Marco Llinásdirector of the Productive and Business Development Division of ECLAC, presented an x-ray of the recent economic performance of the region. According to Llinás, Latin America closed the decade that ends in 2023 with a average annual growth of just 0.9%a figure well below the 2% that was achieved during the so-called “lost decade” of the ’80s.
In his speech, Llinás explained that there is a stagnationand even a setback, in the productivity levels of the region. Faced with this panorama, ECLAC raises the need to scale up and strengthen the productive development policies (PDP) as a tool to overcome structural barriers and promote productive transformation. These policies, he explained, must be designed through a collaborative approach between the public and private sectors, academia and civil societyseeking to identify and resolve bottlenecks in different key sectors of the economy.
Under this experimentalist governance approach, Llinás highlighted the use of initiatives cluster as a way of organizing multi-actor work. Currently and through its Platform for Cluster Initiatives and Other Territorial Productive Articulation InitiativesECLAC has identified more than 370 of these initiatives in the region that are already being articulated in a community of practice.
In response to this reality, in September of this year, ECLAC launched the Panorama of Productive Development Policies in Latin America and the Caribbean 2024a study that offers a diagnosis of the situation in the region and proposes a series of recommendations for the countries to consider. Among the main suggestions, the report highlights the importance of strengthening multi-stakeholder governance and multilevel, improving coordination between sectors and levels of government. It also highlights the need for iIncrease technical, operational, political and prospective capabilities for the design and implementation of PDPpromote the cluster initiatives and other territorial productive articulation initiatives as key tools for economic transformation, and give greater role for subnational governments using a multi-level governance approach. Furthermore, a called on the private sector to take a more active role and leading role in productive development, going from being a beneficiary to becoming a central actor in these policies.
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