Last Thursday, October 10, the Latin American and Caribbean Economic System (SELA) held the virtual seminar “Public strategies for the promotion of sustainable enterprises led by women in Latin America and the Caribbean”, in order to raise awareness about the impact that the implementation of sustainable practices in SMEs in the region. The meeting was attended by experts from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Women’s Fund and LAFISE, who shared their knowledge about public policies that promote sustainable entrepreneurship.
During the seminar, Nicolo Gligo, Economic Affairs Officer of ECLAC, began by explaining the structural difficulties facing the region, exemplified by low growth and stagnant productivity. This panorama, according to Gligo, represents a “new lost decade” for Latin America and the Caribbean and part of it is explained by the low level of investment and low productivity: “productivity in the region has been stagnant and, in some cases , has been declining for decades,” he noted.
Given this context, Gligo assured that there is great heterogeneity between sectors and companies. SMEs, in particular, show a lower level of productivity than large companies, a less pronounced disparity in other contexts, such as Europe. This is why ECLAC insists that, “to advance productive transformation, it is necessary to improve productive development policies.”
The organization is promoting a new vision of productive development policies, collected in the publication “Panorama of Productive Development”, published in August. The report details six central axes to carry out said transformation, among which the need to focus resources on sectors with high profitability potential in each country. Gligo explained that the success of these policies “does not depend so much on the amount of resources invested, but rather on governance that promotes a collaborative and multilevel effort.” ECLAC proposes a cluster approach and suggests that integration be encouraged at both the vertical and horizontal levels.
Another of the key elements that Gligo highlighted is the importance of adopting a trial and error approach, “policies have to mature and this implies overcoming the times of political processes to accumulate learning.” Likewise, ECLAC urged to strengthen the internalization of ventures through the integration of external markets and coordination with other countries.
Regarding policies to support entrepreneurship, a call was made to address them systematically, promoting coordination and coherence between different areas and levels of government. ECLAC identified strategic sectors for the productive transformation of the region, such as renewable energy, the bioeconomy and the circular economy, among others.
According to Gligo, “support for entrepreneurship is relatively low and little considered in productive development policies.” There is also a low alignment between ministries that do not recognize themselves as part of productive development policies, which generates a great dispersion of resources and a limited supply of instruments aimed at encouraging collaboration, coordination and governance. effective.
In response to this situation, ECLAC formulated more than 80 recommendations to move towards a solution, including strengthening governance, developing cluster initiatives and deepening the territorialization of productive development policies.
The seminar concluded with a positive message in which Gligo insisted that Latin America and the Caribbean must take advantage of the competitive advantage in the green transformation sectors that are fundamental for the region to explore “new ways of doing things and new sectors in which to undertake ”. From the perspective of ECLAC, it is considered that it is necessary for enterprises to be part of the green transformation and that, therefore, productive development policies must support growth in areas such as renewables, strategic minerals, water and sanitation, tourism sustainable and food security.
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