On an official visit to Chile, the Speaker of the Swedish Parliament Urban Ahlin participated on Monday, March 7 in a round table at the headquarters of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in Santiago, in which they addressed the region’s economic, social and environmental challenges.
The senior official and his delegation, formed by Kiefer Jakob, Sweden’s Ambassador to Chile and other representatives of the Swedish Parliament, the Embassy of Sweden in Chile and the Chilean-Swedish Institute of Culture, were received by ECLAC’s Deputy Executive Secretary, Antoni…
This document, prepared by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) Washington Office, presents and analyzes the most recent developments…
A recent training workshop facilitated by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) subregional headquarters for the Caribbean has “opened the eyes” of the Ministry of Finance of Saint Kitts and Nevis on how budgeting can be done “better”, according to Mr. Calvin Edwards, Deputy Financial Secretary in the Ministry of Finance. The objective of the workshop was to build the capacity of public officials to conduct Public Expenditure Reviews (PERs) with applications to their respective sectors.
PERs are intended to align expenditures with government’s pri…
A proposal to address the Caribbean’s high debt burden and strategies to achieve sustainable development in the region will be the focus of discussions when two important meetings of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC): the Caribbean Development Roundtable (CDR) and the Caribbean Development and Cooperation Committee (CDCC) convene in Basseterre, Saint Kitts and Nevis, on 21 and 22 April 2016, respectively.
The CDR brings together senior level policymakers from governments of the Caribbean; officials of the United Nations system; representatives of regiona…
Twenty Government officials from Belize benefited from a one week workshop to build capacity in Conducting Public Expenditure Reviews (PERs), focusing on Applications for Education, Health, Agriculture and Social Protection. PERs are intended to align expenditures with government’s priorities. They are also intended to provide savings, either from expenditure reallocation or by reducing unproductive expenditures. In addition they improve fiscal management and can provide fiscal space especially when a country is experiencing high debt levels.
The workshop conducted by ECLAC Caribbean, wh…
A public financial institution from Brazil, Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (BNDES) will soon benefit from the established disaster assessment expertise of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) subregional headquarters for the Caribbean, as a team from the Sustainable Development and Disaster Unit (SDDU) visits from 1-4 March to present ECLAC’s disaster assessment training package to officials of the Brazilian Development Bank.
The initiative follows other similar efforts to strengthen the ability of countries in Latin America and the Ca…
Under the auspices of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), two important initiatives were undertaken to assist the Philippines to develop, design and implement an effective unemployment protection scheme. These initiatives included: 1) a study tour for officials and policy makers from the Philippines on Viet Nam’s Unemployment Insurance Scheme and 2) a workshop on implementing reforms on the Philippines’ protection from unemployment schemes.…
The survey provides an overview of the economic performance for 2014 of the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago plus the eight member states of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU) and the outlook for 2015. Data were collected from a review of reports from national governments and through interviews with government officials in each of the countries analyzed.…
The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has provided a “strong answer” to what senior public officials across the Caribbean have been searching for in order to improve the budgeting process of public administrations, according to the participants of a week-long regional training workshop that provided officials with robust tools and techniques necessary for more effective management of public finances.
Public Expenditure Reviews (PERs) are intended to align public sector expenditure with the priorities of national governments. They also promote increased savings, ei…
The financing proposal for a plan to introduce electric and hybrid vehicles in the public service of Saint Lucia was discussed during a high-level meeting hosted by the German Federal Enterprise for International Cooperation (GIZ) in partnership with ECLAC Caribbean, in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, on 8 September 2016. This represents a major step in the Government of Saint Lucia’s proposal for transitioning its fleet of official vehicles from petrol to electric and hybrid, as well as the development of a solar carpark with electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
This innovative…
Information generated from mobile phones can be successfully used to contain the spread of non-communicable diseases, as was recently done to stem the spread of the Chikungunya virus in the Caribbean. This opportunity was explained in the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) recently published report titled “An assessment of big data for official statistics in the Caribbean”.
The report notes that the use of big data through geospatial (or location) information was used to support healthcare, and to design social intervention measures to address …
High-level government officials and senior international gender experts are calling for more to be done to ensure the economic and social autonomy of Caribbean women. Within the context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the opportunities and challenges faced by women as against men in such areas as employment, education, human rights and political leadership speak to the issues of equality which are at the heart of discussions being held at the Caribbean preparatory meeting of the XIII Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, taking place on 26-27 July 201…
“The challenge facing the Caribbean is to identify paths to development that emphasize macroeconomic stability with growth, equity, and environmental sustainability. This will provide a bulwark against external shocks and the protection necessary for those that are most vulnerable”, Mr. Antonio Prado, Deputy Executive Secretary of ECLAC, said during the opening of the 26th session of the Caribbean Development and Cooperation Committee (CDCC), held in Basseterre, Saint Kitts and Nevis on 22 April 2016.
Addressing senior policy makers from across the subregion, Diane Quarless, Director of ECLAC …
This study focuses on the relationship among official development assistance (ODA), social capital and economic growth in Latin American countries, attempting to determine whether the impact of such assistance on growth is conditional on the receiving country’s stock of social capital. To this end, we use “trust” to measure social capital in an unbalanced panel of 18 Latin American countries over the period 2001-2010. After accounting for country and time effects in a dynamic panel data model, our results show that the impact of ODA on growth is indeed conditional on the level of trust that ex…
In July, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) will launch a training program in quantitative analysis techniques for officials from Argentina’s public administration.
The program consists of four independent courses of a theoretical-practical nature, 20 hours each, which will be implemented as workshops with emphasis on the application of concepts and techniques presented using software that is suited to each specific one.
The first course will take place on July 26-29 and will be given by Alejandra Silva, of ECLAC’s Latin American and Caribbean Demographic Cente…
The data revolution for sustainable development has triggered interest in the use of big data for official statistics such that theUnited Nations Economic and Social Council considers it to be almost an obligation for statistical organizations to explore big data. Big data has been promoted as a more timely and cheaper alternative to traditional sources of official data, and one that offers great potential for monitoring the sustainable development goals. However, privacy concerns, technology and capacity remain significant obstacles to the use of big data. This study makes a case for incor…