Latin America, toward productive transformation

In his intervention, Germán Ríos pointed out that in the past few years Latin America achieved significant advances in social matters by reducing the poverty rate by more than 20 points and considerably increasing the middle class. The main challenge for the region in a complex external scenario which is no longer favorable, is to capitalize and preserve the social advances already achieved. For Rios, overcoming this challenge requires advances in microeconomic reforms. 

Germán Ríos pointed out that productive transformation is the key in this reform process that seeks to increase regional productivity and competitiveness. A reform process that needs to promote the strengths of a region which has a significant amount of natural resources, that lives a situation of demographic bonus, and that has a "secret weapon", represented by the Multilatinas companies that are competitive at a global scale. 

Finally, Ríos reflected on the need to define the priority areas to channel investments in this microeconomic reforms process. Education, infrastructure, and innovation are the areas in which Latin America has to make stronger efforts. Rios stated that in the first place, emphasis should be placed on equal opportunities, which are achieved through improvements in educational standards, leading to break the circle of poverty; with respect to infrastructure, CAF's Executive said that it is necessary to have greater investments to improve productivity and social development, and financing is essential for this. Rios finished his analysis referring to the fact that the Latin American entrepreneurship ecosystem has not been able to take off due to the lack of coordination between the technological agents, innovators, and low investment in Research and Development. In his opinion, these elements are essential to advance in the area of productive diversification that the region badly needs.

Salvador Arriola's analysis focused on Latin American deceleration, and noted that, in this context, the greatest challenge for the region is to protect the social reforms while at the same time adapting to the current scenario. At the same time, Professor José Antonio Ocampo highlighted the internal and external factors of this era of crisis, referring to the fact that the behavior of the different Latin American economies has been diverse in the past few years. Ocampo stated that investment in infrastructure is a great opportunity to achieve regional integration.