CAF presents successful experiences in competitiveness

(Caracas, October 19, 2004).– The CAF Meeting for Competitiveness was held today in Caracas, Venezuela. The one-day seminar presented experiences which have had a great impact on promoting the competitive capacity of the countries of the Andean region.

In his opening remarks CAF President & CEO Enrique García said the event highlighted the achievements of the Andean Competitiveness Program (PAC), a CAF initiative which since December 1999 has been promoting competitiveness as a key element for sustainable development and integration in the Andean region.

"For CAF, competitiveness means raising the productivity of economies in favor of the social and human development of our countries", García said.

The event included presentations by leaders from 13 PAC projects in four separate sessions - clusters, prospective, entrepreneurial capacity, and knowledge and social capital assets – accompanied by presentations by four international experts in each of these areas.

The first session on clusters emphasized the capacity for association present in projects such as the Center for Software Engineering Excellence (Venezuela); the clusters of grapes, wines and singanis (Bolivia); electric-electronic sector (Colombia); and table grape exports (Peru). This session was attended by the German consultant Jörg Meyer-Stamer, a specialist who has introduced successful models of local economic development in various countries of Latin America, Asia and Africa.

The second session "Prospective" showed how this tool can help organizations build competitive goals by constructing possible scenarios. Presentations by Ian Miles and Rafael Popper – researchers at the Policy Research on Engineering, Science and Technology of Manchester University in Great Britain – accompanied the presentation of the Colombian National Prospective Technology Program, a project which uses prospective to narrow the technological gap in Colombian companies.

The third session on entrepreneurial capacity relates to the potential for creation of new institutions for raising competitiveness, such as Services for the Entrepreneur (Venezuela); Pinchincha "Emprender" Technology-Based Enterprise Incubator (Ecuador); and in Colombia, Virtual Department for Creation of Enterprises, and the Andean Program for Export of Technologies and Technology Services (EXPORTE). The keynote presentation was by Germán Echecopar, director of the Center for Entrepreneurship of the Alfonso Ibáñez University of Chile.

The common element of the projects in the fourth and final session on active knowledge and social capital was use of knowledge as an element for building competitive advantages. In this section Laurence Prusak, professor at the Harvard Business School, gave a videoconference on knowledge management, subject for which he is known worldwide. The projects presented were the asparagus cluster and business networks of northern Peru, the competitiveness agreements in Colombia, and the Red Venezuela Sí Compite cluster.

PAC has accompanied these projects which have had a high impact in each country, with other activities focused on creating strategic alliances among the main actors in competitiveness in the region – for example, the national competitiveness councils in Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela – and the attempt to position competitiveness as a basic point on the public and private agendas of the Andean countries. The specific areas on which the Program is working are institution-building, development of information technologies and clusters, stimulating entrepreneurial capacity, and improving the business climate.

These projects also have an important theoretical basis thanks to research by PAC and the Center for the International Development of Harvard University from 1999 to 2001. The content of this research, along with presentations and news on PAC, are available at www.competitividadandina.org and in books published by CAF.