The Importance of Raúl Prebisch in the 21st Century

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) is developing a project called "Raúl Prebisch and 21st century development challenges", which aims to place the ideas of Raúl Prebisch and the first stage of structuralist thinking at the heart of the current debate on development in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Through this project, which is being carried out with the support of the Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC), ECLAC is paying homage to one of the region's most important economists and one of its main inspirations.

Prebisch, the Argentine economist born in 1901, was ECLAC Executive Secretary from 1950 to 1963, Director of the Latin American and Caribbean Institute for Economic and Social Planning (ILPES) and founding Director of the CEPAL Review until the year of his death in 1986.

Throughout his career, he epitomized the quest to build a region that is politically strong and integrated, economically and socially developed, egalitarian, internationally open and dynamic. He understood that progress could not be made in just one of these spheres without advances in the others.

According to ECLAC, a critical review of these contributions shows that they remain relevant to research, policymaking and teaching in development issues. Through this project, the Commission is therefore revisiting the region's main school of economic thinking, so as to enrich the current debate on the present and future development of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The Commission recently launched an entire website to provide a space for the region's experts to exchange knowledge and will make it possible to rethink the ideas of the renowned economist in a way that constitutes a major qualitative step forward.

According to Antonio Prado, Deputy Executive Secretary of this regional commission of the United Nations "We want to promote discussion, research and teaching on the current status and future prospects for the key issues of the thinking of Prebisch in particular and ECLAC in general".

According to Mr. Prado, the reasons why the Commission was looking back at one of its founders at this stage in the 21st century are as follows: "Firstly, the development of Latin America and the Caribbean remains a challenge. Secondly, there is still a need to strengthen regional unity. Thirdly, we believe that there is an ongoing need to disseminate and deepen structuralist thinking in order to, as dreamed of by Prebisch, generate strategic visions, analyses and recommendations from and for the region around the major challenges for its economic, social and environmental development"..