Having productive development agendas with a territorial focus is decisive for the future of Latin America and the Caribbean

Having productive development agendas with a territorial approach, which are supported by digital transformation and cooperation spaces, is decisive for the future of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, highlighted authorities and specialists at the international seminar: “Policies Territorial production companies, digitization and productivity”, organized on April 18, 2023 by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in a hybrid format from its headquarters in Santiago, Chile.

The opening remarks were given by Nicolás Grau, Minister of Economy, Development and Tourism of Chile (video); Félix Fernández-Shaw, Director for Latin America and the Caribbean of DGINTPA of the European Commission; and Marco Llinás, Director (ai) of ECLAC’s Division of Productive and Business Development.

“The Government of President Gabriel Boric has a firm and robust commitment to decentralization, political but also economic decentralization. With regard to the Ministry of Economy, this is expressed in the creation of the Regional Productive Development Committees, spaces where the promotion policies that are implemented in each region will be defined and designed,” said Minister Nicolás Grau through of a video message.

The Government is expected to end having created these instances in all regions of the country, indicated the head of Economy, who thanked ECLAC for “the tremendous support they have given us throughout this process, particularly in the definition of technical aspects regarding how to organize the Regional Productive Development Committees”, he said.

Félix Fernández-Shaw, from DGINTPA, also thanked ECLAC and the specialized national organizations that implemented the Facility Territorial and Facility Digital Agriculture projects financed by the European Union, and called for continuing to work together considering that both regions have a “shared vision.” .

For the representative, both the Latin American and Caribbean region and the European Union are concerned about carrying out “fair green and digital transitions”, highlighting the recent launch of a digital alliance between both regions that seeks to “promote not only dialogue of policies, but also an investment and public-private collaboration that allows understanding the needs of the digital transition from a vision completely focused on the human being”.

During his speech, Marco Llinás, Director (ai) of ECLAC’s Productive and Business Development Division, stressed that the seminar “is an opportunity to relaunch an agenda to which, from now on, we will dedicate an important part of our our efforts and resources here at ECLAC: it is about productive development policies and agendas with a territorial approach”.

“We are convinced that productivity is local and is created locally, with local actors, so we will be working with the vision set that, in a few years, deep strategic development agendas are being designed and implemented. productive from the territories, at the subnational level, throughout Latin America and the Caribbean,” said the ECLAC official.

“Working on productive development agendas from the local level or place-based policies, as they are now known, is not only good economics, that is, good economics, but also good politics, that is, good politics. For this reason, from ECLAC we will seek to deepen the efforts of territorial productive development”, explained Llinás.

Specifically, he said, research and the generation of knowledge, technical assistance and the development of instruments and tools to support national and subnational governments will be promoted, in addition to promoting spaces for dialogue at all levels.

“The ‘cluster initiatives’ will be one of the axes of ECLAC’s work in this matter”, understood as “spearheads to land territorial productive development agendas”, explained Llinás, who thanked the European Commission for the trust placed in it. in this regional organization of the United Nations to implement two projects within the framework of its Facility for Development in Transition.

“The territorial emphasis in our work does not mean that we will abandon efforts made at the national level. Furthermore, as we have always insisted, the ideal world is one in which there are bottom-up efforts (from bottom to top), working in an articulated manner with top-down efforts (from top to bottom). Hence the importance of multilevel governance”, he remarked.

After the inaugural session, a panel on multilevel coordination for the development of subnational productive policies was held, in which the role that national and regional authorities should play was discussed. Subsequently, the results of the two projects financed by the European Union were presented.

It is, on the one hand, the Territorial Facility, implemented by ECLAC 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 Undersecretariat of Regional Development in Chile (SUBDERE ) and the National Planning Department in Colombia (DNP). This included technical assistance for the joint identification of territorial productive opportunities in 12 provinces of Argentina and for the application of digital technologies to territorial productive strategies and support policies for agricultural chains in a region of Chile (Arica Parinacota ) and two Departments of Colombia (Huila and Risaralda).

On the other hand, the Digital Agriculture Facility was implemented by ECLAC in conjunction with the Ibero-American Network for the Digitalization of Agriculture and Livestock (RIDAG) -formed by INTA Argentina, INIA Chile, IRTA Spain and INIA Uruguay-. This included consultancies in specific areas in Costa Rica (ICAFE) and Ecuador (Think Tank Cacao Foundation).

The last panel was dedicated to learning and perspectives for the application of digital technologies in territorial and agricultural productive development.

In closing, Jeannette Sánchez, Director of ECLAC’s Natural Resources Division, thanked the great participation in the seminar and highlighted the need for Latin America and the Caribbean to jointly address a series of challenges, such as increasing productivity , improving resilience and effective response to the climate crisis. “In this process it will be essential to improve the efficiency of the institutions,” especially those that operate in the territories, she said.

The current scenario is conducive to reporting on the results achieved in the Facility projects, highlighted Sánchez, who reaffirmed that ECLAC will continue to provide support to the countries of the region in this area so that they can better face the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic. COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine.