Spotlight: Economic change key for LatAm to reach UN development goals

Latin America needs a new formula to achieve sustainable development, said a regional meeting before ending here on Friday.

The 36th session of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) highlighted "for a new political economy -- a new equation between the state, the market and society -- and new international and national coalitions."

"The dominant development pattern (in Latin America) is unsustainable," ECLAC Executive Secretary Alicia Barcena told participants at the five-day gathering.

The traditional development model applied in Latin America is not working, said Barcena, citing reduced growth rates that in recent decades have not exceeded 2 percent, the worst trade statistics in eight years, and insufficient investment in human capital, research and development, along with persistent poverty, income disparity and now vulnerability to climate change.

"To confront these challenges, we propose a progressive structural change that increases the incorporation of knowledge in the economies. New coalitions, new institutions and public-private alliances are required," Barcena said.

"Our proposal for a new development pattern is political, not technical. The horizon is equality, the progressive structural change is the path and politics (is) the instrument," she added.

ECLAC's proposals are contained in its report "Horizons 2030: Equality at the Center of Sustainable Development."

The report aims to help Latin America "reduce economic, social and environmental imbalances that affect the region today in order to achieve development based on equality and sustainability," and reach UN-designated development goals by the year 2030.

One of the main challenges to the 2030 agenda is that "the means of implementation...is not supported by an institutional framework or effective or sufficient global governance," the report says, calling for "policies capable of advancing the sustainable development goals."

To that end, Mexican Finance Minister Luis Videgaray, who attended Thursday's session, said the Mexican government agreed with the diagnosis presented by the report, but believed more competitive markets would help drive development.

"We should make our markets more open, so that there is competition, and more inclusion, so that all the population receive its benefits," he said.

"As ECLAC says in its document, we need to foster inclusive growth and new dynamic public-private associations. New contracts must be generated, a new relation between both sectors," said Mariana Mazzucato, professor of Economics of Innovation at the Science Policy Research Unit of Britain's University of Sussex.

She also defended the role of the state in the generation of public policies and in preventing failures that could be created by the market, as well as in encouraging alliances with the private sector.

Ministers and representatives from the ministries of finance, economy, planning, energy, trade, social development and foreign affairs from the ECLAC countries debated the contents of the report during the last two days of the session. Endi