The Latin American and Caribbean region faces considerable challenges in terms of reducing the non-tariff costs and the time associated with foreign trade operations. The Global Survey on Digital and Sustainable Trade Facilitation 2019, a joint initiative of the five United Nations regional commissions, seeks to gauge how far countries have advanced with regard to the baseline provided by the previous versions of the Survey in 2015 and 2017. This report summarizes the results of the Global Survey 2019 for the 18 participating countries from Latin America and the Caribbean, which account for 93…
Evolving Development thinking and practices in
Latin America and the Caribbean: The role of ECLAC
Keynote Address by Dr Antonio Prado
Deputy Executive Secretary
18th CDCC Monitoring Committee
Port of Spain, 19 May 2017
I thank Diane for that very fitting introduction to my presentation here this morning. We have begun considering how best to commemorate 70 years of ECLAC’s work as a Regional Commission of the United Nations. As you have just seen, our support for development in the region has taken many different forms. However it is safe to say that our principal contri…
Global antidumping activity peaked in 2001, with 366 petitions initiated world-wide, and rapidly diminished to just 163 cases in 2007. With the onset of the current major world-wide recession some observers feared that antidumping usage would climb dramatically; however while antidumping activity was up by 28% in 2008 (to 208 cases initiated, according to WTO statistics), the rise was not nearly commensurate with the financial distress, and new antidumping initiations for the first three quarters of 2009 -at 154 cases- are on pace to show little change for the full year compared to the previou…
Studies of Argentina, Colombia, Chile and Mexico conducted collaboratively by ECLAC and GTZ point to environmental impacts associated with small and medium enterprises (SMEs), particularly in the manufacturing sector. This impact is essentially local, though it can become significant at the aggregate level, i.e., SMEs are responsible for some of the environmental problems caused by industry as a whole. Though SMEs account for only a small fraction of such problems -at the national level, the effect is often marginal in terms of environmental degradation- the impact may be significant and fairl…
The present level of intra-regional trade of Latin America and the Caribbean in relation to their total exports is still low when compared to the peak of 21.1% registered in 1997, despite its rebound in 2003 and continued recovery into 2004. While this trade holds a high potential for future growth, there are a series of problems to be addressed in order for regional integration to continue on the paths of recovery and deep integration. The countries in the region should keep working on the constraints that its regional integration process continues to suffer from the persistence of non-tariff…
Executive Summary The global economy is experiencing a recession, which originated in the United States and is affecting developed and developing economies alike. Between the second and third quarter of 2001, the United States GDP growth rate decreased from 2.6 per cent to 1.2 per cent. For the same period, the European Union's GDP growth rate declined from 2.4 per cent to 1.7 per cent. For Latin America and the Caribbean the growth will fall from 4 per cent in 2000 to 1 per cent in 2001. A central issue regarding the current recession is whether it will be short lived or rather …
This article analyses the economic rationale of Brazil's tariff policy during the first two years of the Plano Real. To this end, a study is made of the changes made in import duties for all the products traded. The tariff reform process in Brazil was begun in 1988, after the old Tariff Act had been in effect for thirty years, and represented a marked intensification in the process of trade openness, with the definition of a schedule of gradually decreasing tariffs which was further speeded up as from 1990. The Plano Real began in July 1994 and had many effects on import policy. The trade…
The Caribbean Meeting of Experts on Implementation of the SIDS Programme of Action,
held at the Holiday Inn Hotel, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, 17-19 May 1995 was convened
to review progress towards implementation of the SIDS Programme of Action (SIDS-POA), to
discuss constraints on the effective implementation of the Programme and to agree on priority areas
for action.
It was organized by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the
Caribbean/Caribbean Development and Cooperation Committee (ECLAC/CDCC), in collaboration
with the United Nations Development Programme’s Special Unit …
The regional digital trade integration index (RDTII) results from cooperation among several United Nations Regional Commissions. This guide is based on the methodology and indicators of RDTII Version 1.0. It provides essential explanations of the structure and rationale of RDTII 1.0 and guidance on data collection and sources. It is expected to give a guideline to those involved in collecting regulatory data to analyze the digital trade regulatory environment based on the RDTII 1.0 framework. It is useful also for those who will use the index and related indicators for policy analysis and draf…
Seeking to deepen the understanding about the relationship between non-tariff measures (NTMs) and international trade, this work estimates bilateral volume effects of imposing NTMs on international trade, focusing on two of the most observed measures: technical barriers to trade (TBT) and sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures. Estimates were carried out for more than 5,000 products at the 6-digit level of the Harmonized System using a panel for 2001-2015 with NTM data notified by more than 150 member countries of the World Trade Organization (WTO).…
The air transport industry is deemed essential in the face of the current outbreak, being the means of transport that regularly distributes crucial goods such as medical equipment, inputs and supplies, as well as other essential assets for the functioning of a country. However, since the beginning of the pandemic, it has displayed an overall downturn. The air cargo performance demonstrated a severe capacity shortfall at a global scale:
✓ Global demand, which includes both domestic and international markets, fell by 15.2% in March compared to the previous year (-15.8% for internatio…
The Caribbean economy has experienced increased growth in the last year, moving from 1.4% in 2013 to 1.8% in 2014, with even more positive prospects for 2015, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), at the launch of the flagship report: “Preliminary Overview of the Economies of Latin America and the Caribbean 2014”.
This was presented by ECLAC Executive Secretary Alicia Bárcena at the Commission’s headquarters in Santiago, Chile on 2 December 2014, and was broadcast online and via videoconference.
Following this launch, the ECLAC subregional headq…
The commodity boom between 2002 and 2008 played an importantrole in increasing export earnings from Latin America. Growing demandfrom China for primary products was one factor stimulating the boom.While the direct effects of the growth of exports from Latin Americato China have been extensively explored, the indirect impact of higherChinese demand for commodities on global commodity prices hasreceived less attention. This paper estimates the contribution made bythe growth of Chinese demand to the rise in the prices of the 15 maincommodities exported from the region. On the basis of these estim…
The global economic crisis has put an end to a period of worldwide expansion and halted the integration of Latin America and developing Asia with the international economy. Current and expected economic weakness in the advanced economies has led us to look elsewhere for sources of growth. Emerging economies in Asia and Latin America have increased their contributions to world production, finance, and trade in the past decades. In doing so, the two regions have deepened their economic ties with significant implications for the recovery of their respective economies. In this paper we discuss the…
The liberalization of Maritime Transport is one important element to increase the export competitiveness of a country. In fact, studies remark that, for some countries, the effective rate of protection by the costs of transport is much higher than that of tariffs. One of the most relevant elements in the determination of the costs of maritime transport refers to the efficient management of ports. The global trend towards trade liberalization and integration and economic interdependence led Latin American countries to opt for programs of economic reforms that incorporated the participation of d…
Introduction The Netherlands Antilles is an autonomous entity within the Kingdom of the Netherlands and comprises a federation of five Caribbean islands: Bonaire and Curacao (the Leeward islands) which comprise 80 per cent of the population of 211,000 and Saba, St. Eustatius and the southern part of St. Maarten (the Windward islands). Like the other countries in the Kingdom, it enjoys full autonomy in internal matters as, for example, education, public health, justice and customs. It has a per capita income of about US$ 12,000. The Leeward Islands and the Windward Islands account for a…
Summary Trade between Africa and South America is of relatively minor importance for each region. The main purpose of this report is to determine if a scarcity of maritime transport services could explain this comparative unimportance. More than half of all trade between the two regions is accounted for by just ten specific bilateral flows in petroleum, grain, iron ore, coal, and sugar. Almost all inter-regional trade moves by sea, mostly by non-liner charter shipping services. Trade between Africa and South America is subject to relatively low freight rates, mainly due to the type of produ…
Preface
This book is the result of a project developed by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC);, with support from the Ford Foundation. The text encompasses five articles analyzing emerging economies that were generally rated as successful by international financial institutions and the financial press during episodes characterized by a broad supply of external funds. We include the cases of Chile, Korea, and Mexico in the critical years of the 1990s and Chile in the deep crisis of the 1970s. All these economies were praised for their efficient pub…
Abstract This paper analyses the competitiveness and technological structure of manufactured exports by leading Latin American and Asian economies for 1980-97. It explains East Asian performance with reference to the strategies adopted for technological development, focusing on foreign direct investment strategies. It particularly draws on the experience of Singapore, the countgry that has used FDI to promote industrial growth and technological upgrading more effectively than any other developing country. The paper starts by analysing the nature of technological activity in developing countrie…
This article analyses the treatment accorded to foreign investment under the present development strategy. To this end, it looks at the recent dynamics of both direct and indirect foreign investment, including portfolio investment and quasi-equity operations, the latter with reference to contracts for the transfer of production know-how. For this purpose, the main resource flows and their directions are analysed, together with the changes which have taken place in corporate strategies. It is concluded that it is necessary to put together an explicit development strategy in which the main objec…