Overview of Productive Development Policies in Latin America and the Caribbean 2024

Good morning to all of you who are joining us at this Seminar to launch the first Overview of Productive Development Policies in Latin America and the Caribbean.

I would like to extend a special greeting to all the international panelists who are with us today and to the hundreds of people who are connected via all of ECLAC’s virtual platforms.

I would like to take this opportunity to provide some logistical information: this seminar has simultaneous translation from Spanish to English to Portuguese. We would therefore be grateful if all those who require this service would adjust their respective channels on the Zoom platform, on the ECLAC website and on the YouTube channel.

Dear participants,

As you know, ECLAC has a significant number of annual flagship reports on Latin America and the Caribbean: the Social Panorama, the Fiscal Panorama, the Economic Survey, the Preliminary Overview of the Economies, a report on foreign direct investment, and one on trade, among others. But until now, it did not have an annual report on the challenges of productive development, which has always been one of the topics that has been at the center of ECLAC’s reflections.

Since I arrived at ECLAC, I have set myself the goal of strengthening ECLAC’s work in this area, among others, and one of the ways of doing so has been through the idea of ​​adding this Panorama of Productive Development Policies to ECLAC’s contributions, with the intention of making it an annual publication.

ECLAC’s first reflections on this topic focused on studying the process of structural change, that is, the shift from a predominance of agricultural employment and production to industrialization, a process that was seen as the path to development. In addition, ECLAC always worked to understand what was initially called technical progress, which today we would call technological change.

In the following decades, there were reflections and studies on productivity in agriculture itself, methods for technical progress, export orientation, the importance of MSMEs, the role of conglomerates and large companies, the digitalization of production processes, among many other topics. And we cannot fail to mention the role of economic integration in industrialization and productive development.

Particularly influential was the 1990 report Productive Transformation with Equity, but this is only one of many contributions in this field.

This evolution of ECLAC’s thinking has continued to this day.

However, the current context made it urgent to fill what we see as a gap in the conversation about productive development policies, for several reasons:

First, because, as we will explain in more detail in a few minutes, we see the countries of the region mired in a trap of low capacity for growth. And it is in the PDPs that much of the instrument is available for countries to get out of this trap and promote higher, sustained, inclusive and sustainable growth.

Second, we are in an era of accelerated technological revolutions: digital; biogenetics; the revolution in life and health sciences; nanotechnology, to name just a few. The convergence of these and other technological revolutions in the world of production, health, education, digital government and other fields is changing everything. Productive development policies cannot remain what they were 30, 20 or even 10 years ago. They must recognize these new realities and consider what capabilities to develop and how to do so in order to compete in the modern world and promote growth and employment.

Third, we face a very different geoeconomic and geopolitical reality than 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago. Partly because of this, industrial policies have returned to the global spotlight, with countries such as the US, China and the European Union implementing significant efforts in this area.

Fourth, the imperative of sustainable development, which includes such important transitions as the energy and electromobility transition, and the transition to the circular economy, sustainable agriculture, and mitigation and adaptation to climate change, again to name just a few, means that we have to rethink productive transformation and economic growth.

These are some of the reasons that justify raising the level of attention to productive development policies, to the discussion of the what and the how to move the needles of productive transformation and productivity.

And that is the objective of launching this new annual series entitled Panorama of Productive Development Policies in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The subtitle of this first issue is How to promote the great productive transformation that the region requires? Because that, no more and no less, is what the region requires to create prosperity and socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable growth: a great productive transformation.

And in it we argue, with evidence, that it is necessary to deepen and scale up productive development policies. That is the call and the meaning of this Panorama.

As this is the first PDP Overview to be released, we have made a change to the usual dynamic of presenting flagship reports today.

In addition to inviting the media as is our practice, we have organized a seminar following the presentation of the document.

This seminar will feature three panels with a total of 15 speakers, all of them recognized specialists in the topics of productive development policies.

• The first panel focuses on the challenges of current productive development policies in the region;
• the second, in governance and in institutions for productive development policies; and
• The third and last, on the role of subnational governments and multi-level governance.

Without further ado, we will proceed to present the report, in a very summarized manner of course.

But before starting, I would like to thank Marco Llinás, Director of the Productive and Business Development Division of ECLAC, and the entire team of the division, for their great work for more than a year to develop the product that we present to you today.

I would also like to acknowledge that this publication and some of the research behind it benefited from financial support from the European Commission, and GIZ and BMZ in Germany, to whom we are very grateful.

I will begin the presentation of the Report myself and then give the floor to Marco Llinás.