Mexico is at an opportune moment to design a Productive Development Policy: ECLAC

Mexico is at the center of major productive and geopolitical changes that offer it an opportunity for its economic, social and environmental development, said today Jorge Mario Martínez-Piva, Officer in Charge of the Directorate of the Subregional Headquarters of the Economic Commission for Latin America. and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in Mexico.

The world is going through a period of profound changes and geopolitical tensions lead to geoeconomic fragmentation. Economic powers are encouraging a new generation of productive development policies and the relocation of their production and supply chains. In this complex international panorama, Mexico has opportunities to attract investment and promote the balanced development of its territory, although to move towards a more dynamic, complex and diversified economy, it requires a productive development policy that promotes innovation, creates quality jobs and improves the living conditions of the population.

During the press conference where the document Key issues for designing and implementing a sustainable productive development policy in Mexico was presented, Martínez-Piva explained that productive development policies must influence the direction of development through the alignment of innovation efforts technology with social and environmental objectives.

The document is the result of collaboration between ECLAC and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES by its acronym in German). On behalf of this, Carlos Cabrera, Coordinator of Economic Dialogue, presented eleven recommendations for Mexico which highlight that the State must play a central role in the design, implementation and coordination of productive development policies in coordination with the private sector and the different orders of government; the prioritization of strategic sectors; have a National Strategy for Sustainable Productive Development; have a robust innovation policy articulated with the strategic sectors, and redesign the professional technical training systems, with special emphasis on the incorporation of women.

“It is proposed,” said Cabrera, “to create a Council for Sustainable Productive Development that coordinates the implementation of a PDP in Mexico. This mechanism would be key to materializing collaboration between the public and private sectors in an institutionalized manner and would function as a coordination mechanism for the implementation process.”

Gerardo Esquivel, economist and associate researcher at El Colegio de México, stressed that the document arises at a time when the world and Mexico are experiencing a paradigm shift in which they are moving from the leadership of the market to the leadership of the State and that this It is a post-neoliberal moment.

“We are entering a new stage in which various countries in the world are resuming these productive development policies and are modernizing and updating them so that they are not subject to criticism from the past and are reconfiguring the State itself and its role in the search for a transformation of the productive structure. The great contribution of the document is that in a brief but very powerful document it describes this context, organizes and systematizes part of the discussion that is being had worldwide,” he explained.

For her part, the President of the Council of the Mexican Association of Photovoltaic Solar Energy, Carla Medina, highlighted the strategic relevance that the energy sector has for Mexico.

“There is a great opportunity to build a new energy agreement, which updates the country’s long-term vision in terms of clean supply, and which distributes responsibilities and benefits along that route. Sufficient, clean and low-cost generation is a precondition of any development model that the Mexican State attempts to carry out. Without a doubt, Mexico must have the capacity to plan and execute in the long term, not only the state, but also the rest of the actors involved,” Medina explained.

The study presented is the result of dialogues with representatives of the public, business, union, academic, international institutions and civil society organizations in Mexico and is part of a series of new studies and technical collaboration work of ECLAC to deepen and scale productive development policies in Latin America and the Caribbean.