Latin America and Caribbean can learn from China to reduce imports dependency: ECLAC

Alicia Barcena, executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), said Tuesday that the region should follow China's lead in how to replace imports with domestic production.

"What China is doing should be applied to Latin America and the Caribbean. Namely, we should diminish the imported components and raise our production of domestic components. This would allow us to become highly competitive," said Barcena.

She said that this mechanism does not "close markets off" but is a strategy to improve domestic value chains across Latin America.

Furthermore, the implementation of significant industrial policies would help to halt low growth, develop new sectors and raise export capacity.

For Barcena, Latin American countries can also become strategic partners for China on the agricultural front, since ECLAC expects the Asian giant to double its food imports by 2020.

Finally, she urged regional countries to bolster their tourism offering, saying that China will see around 100 million outbound tourists in 2015, but that the region only receives 0.3 percent of them.

Last year, China became the second-largest trading partner for the Latin American and Caribbean region as a whole.

Barcena was in Mexico City on Tuesday to release ECLAC's new report, named "Latin America and the Caribbean in the World Economy 2015. The regional trade crisis: assessment and outlook." It predicts that Latin America and the Caribbean will see a 14 percent drop in exports this year. Enditem