SANTIAGO, Chile, CMC – The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has launched a platform for cluster and other territorial productive articulation initiatives in the region.
ECLAC said the Platform seeks to “give visibility to, enhance reciprocal cooperation between and strengthen the multiple productive articulation initiatives underway in the region, in addition to increasing their numbers and their contribution to Latin American and Caribbean countries’ productive development.”
“We have a strong conviction, and strongly recommend to countries, that to achieve a more productive, inclusive, and sustainable development pattern, it is urgently necessary to escalate productive development policies. This goes to the heart of development models in the region and is essential for their transformation,” ECLAC’s Executive Secretary, José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, said during the virtual ceremony.
Ulrich Höcker is the director of the Economic and Social Development and Employment Division at Germany’s GIZ, the institution that supported the Platform’s development. Spoke of the “long and fruitful” strategic partnership that unites BMZ-GIZ and ECLAC.
He described the Platform’s launch as “another excellent example of our joint endeavors to strengthen and nurture regional forums for technical exchange and mutual learning,” praising the initiative for “its strategic and technical aspects since it not only addresses the ‘what’ but also the ‘how’ for supporting the vision of a more productive, inclusive and sustainable future.”
In this first stage, ECLAC said the Platform includes an interactive map, which features 258 clusters and other territorial productive articulation initiatives from the region georeferenced and characterized, corresponding to more than 40,000 businesses in eight countries.
ECLAC said the Platform also provides access to publications, events, and relevant news.
It said other actions will be taken later, such as establishing a community of practice and developing joint projects.
Salazar-Xirinachs said that “within productive development, policies lies the toolbox for orienting growth in specific directions and towards higher and more sustained rates, which is to say, for guiding economic transformation processes towards more inclusive and sustainable development patterns.
“Cluster and other territorial productive articulation initiatives are an essential component of that toolbox,” he said, adding, “It is no longer about believing in the magic of the market, or the spell of the state, but instead in the magic of collaborative processes for productive development.
“But these processes must be designed well. The approach of cluster and productive articulation initiatives, and their governance principles, are a powerful tool on how to do it.”
Salazar-Xirinachs said cluster initiatives provide “governance, management, direction, and problem-solving for the value chains under the productive agglomeration where that governance is non-existent or weak.”
He said the major structural transformations that Latin America and the Caribbean need to overcome the low-growth disease, or trap, in which it finds itself entail new investments, new technologies, new technological ecosystems, new businesses, or the growth of those already in existence, new qualifications in the workforce, and new infrastructures.
“If we were making the investments and economic transformations needed to close our historical legacy of poverty and informality gaps between urban and rural areas, between men and women, and between the workforce’s educational levels – to name a few – we would be growing at rates of at least three, four or five percent,” he said.
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