The Andean Axis for Infrastructure will fuel economic and trade integration

Today, at the headquarters of the Andean Development Corporation (CAF), with the participation of vice-ministers, directors, and representatives of the five countries in the Andean region - Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela – the First Meeting of the Executive Technical Group (GTE) was launched for the development of the infrastructure axis from Caracas to La Paz.

CAF’s executive president, Enrique García, pointed out that the Caracas meeting will begin the preparation of a joint investment plan for transport, telecommunications and power aimed at helping to bring closer together the five Andean countries, and to aid in the creation of a unified logistic platform. García remarked that this is a crucial step in the process of carrying out the Initiative to Integrate South America’s Regional Infrastructure (IIRSA), the mandate issued last year in Brasilia by the presidents of the twelve countries of South America. The plan’s objective is to create over a 10-year period a network of railroads, waterways, highways, telecommunications and power, to meet the needs of the region’s internal market and to rapidly increase the competitiveness of each county’s economy.

GTE is a technical group that was established within the IIRSA framework at the September 2000 presidential summit held in Brasilia. GTE’s objective is to promote the development of technical plans, studies and projects that are needed to start the works required to complete the physical integration of the South American sub-continent. There is to be one GTE for each of the integration and development axes. The GTE installed today is for the Andean Axis.

The Andean GTE will receive technical support from the Technical Coordination Committee (CCT) made up of CAF, the Inter American Development Bank (IADB,) and the Financial Fund for the Development of the Plata River Basin (FONPLATA). In its role of IIRSA’s technical advisor, the CCT proposed the development of 12 axes in South America, to stimulate economic and commercial relations within and among the countries in the region, helping to bring about an infrastructure that will allow South America to project itself outward as one single market in the not-too-distant future.

García emphasized that this initiative differs from previous ones in that from its inception it is multinational and multisectoral, as well as having the full backing of the multilateral banks. It is supportive of the process of Andean integration, as part of South America, and it has a multi-sector focus participated in jointly by the sub-continent’s ministers of Infrastructure, Transport, Commerce, and Planning.

The axes

Three elements were taken into account by CAF, IADB and FONPLATA to identify the integration axes: (1) evidence of real or potential cargo traffic; (2) assessment of the environmental resources present in the respective axis; and (3) the inclusion of all 12 South American countries in the integration scheme. Studies and works are scheduled for this year and next.

Works in six of the axes, including the Andean, are to begin in 2001. The corresponding GTE’s are to be established according to a schedule submitted by CAF’s executive president, on behalf of the CCT, to the ministers of the 12 countries gathered last month in Santa Cruz, Bolivia.

At that time, the ministers appointed their representatives to the technical meeting held today in Caracas, which marks the start of joint technical work on the Andean Axis. At its outset, this work involves the Jungle Border Highway (Carretera Marginal de la Selva} of which the Venezuelan segment is fully completed, and which is to be continued into Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, ending in Bolivia. Next on the GTE installation schedule comes the Mercosur-Chile Axis, planned for June 7th at the headquarters of the Institute for Latin American Integration (INTAL) in Buenos Aires, followed by that of the inter-oceanic Axis for Brazil-Bolivia-Paraguay-Peru-Chile, slated for June 12th at FONPLATA’s headquarters in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia.

The GTE’s will meet once every two months to prepare portfolios of investment projects, to be carried out by either or both the private and the public sectors in each and every one of the South American countries. More information on this initiative is available at the website www.iirsa.org.