Facilitating and Developing Uruguayan Foreign Trade

The event was opened by the president of the National Chamber of Commerce and Services, Marcelo Lombardi; the director and representative in Uruguay of CAF –Latin American development bank-, Gladis Genua; and Uruguay’s Minister for the Economy and Finance, Fernando Lorenzo.

The purpose of the seminar was to lay the foundations for coordinating actions between the public and private sectors with a view to promoting a harmonic development of foreign trade that will make it possible for there to be long-lasting prosperity for the country and the region.

Gladis Genua stated that, while these issues of facilitating and developing trade have been developed on the domestic agendas of Latin American countries, there is still much to be done in this globalized scenario. “The current international environment makes it increasingly necessary to create platforms for doing competitive business that will permit successful entry into international markets. There is a pressing need to develop synergy between the public and the private and, at the same time, to learn of the experiences of other Latin American countries to see how they have done things, analyze which of those elements are similar to the case of Uruguay, and, based on that, promote a national action plan,” concluded Genua.

Marcelo Lombardi, for his part, emphasized “A country with Uruguay’s characteristics in terms of size, population, and development has a pressing need for international trade. For that reason, it is crucial to maintain an open economy, achieve the largest possible number of free trade agreements, maintain trade policy instruments that could adversely affect or interfere with international trade to a minimum, and also work on different aspects that define the country’s competitiveness.”

“Today, there is no debate about an open economy such as Uruguay’s, where any improvement in well-being and development is necessarily going to have to do with promoting foreign trade,” stressed Minister Lorenzo. In this regard, he highlighted the modernizing of the customs as the fundamental aspect of the country’s agenda for facilitating trade. He also mentioned some emblematic projects on that modernization agenda, such as the pilot plan for a digital Single Customs Document (DUA after its initials in Spanish), the progress made with regard to the electronic seal, the Single Foreign Trade Window (VUCE after its initials in Spanish), and the new Uruguayan Customs Code.

The seminar’s closing ceremony was conducted by Uruguay’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Luis Almagro, who stressed that, today, the country is at a crossroads: the crisis of the Doha Round, an international crisis, new protectionist measures, and “for all these things, responses need to be generated by constantly engaging in exchanges with the private sector in order to understand the dynamic of this sector.”

Those who spoke at the event included Julio Lacarte Muro; Isidoro Hodara, vice-president of Zonamérica and professor of International Trade at Uruguay’s Universidad ORT; Diego Rengifo, vice-president of the National Exporters Association of Colombia; Giomar González, president of the Panamanian Chapter of BASC; and Edal Luján, PROMPERU’s senior business services coordinator.