The “Productivity Pact” is the key to boosting sustainable growth in Latin America

The President of Colombia, Iván Duque, together with the executive president of CAF-development bank of Latin America-, Luis Carranza, kicked off the debate in the CAF Conference: Productivity and Innovation for Development, at the Hall 74 event center (Calle 74 # 14–25) in Bogota, Colombia.

President Duque said in his speech: “We welcome the agenda proposed by CAF in its annual report on productivity, competitiveness, savings, investment, employment, and technological innovation. I want Colombia to multiply its unicorns, which are companies founded by ‘millennials,’ and have become highly valued. I want our country to turn creative industries into a new driver for development.”

During his speech, the CAF executive president explained that “the 50-percent gap in per capita income between developed countries and the region is due to productivity, rather than human capital and investments. The key is how well we do things. Productivity is the essential tool to increase growth and well-being for the people. Therefore, we are promoting a “Productivity Pact,” which will allow us to reach political consensus to promote initiatives that prioritize this issue.”

The role of cities in boosting growth was the subject of the first panel of the Conference, attended by Saúl Pineda, Deputy Minister for Business Development of Colombia, Federico Gutiérrez, Mayor of Medellín; Jeffrey Kratz, General Manager for Latin America, Canada and the Caribbean at Amazon; Rafael Puyana, Deputy Sectoral Director-general at Colombia’s National Planning Department; and Hugh Swire, CEO of Water Powered Technologies; moderated by Ernesto Cortés, Chief Editor of El Tiempo.

“At the Ministry, we are promoting five strategic lines of action to increase productivity: Streamlining regulations and procedures, as well as strategies to promote legality and business formalization; promotion of dynamic entrepreneurship and business acceleration; technological expansion and productivity factories; boosting platforms for the development of suppliers, export capacity and to attract anchor investments; and finally, promoting the orange economy and tourism as well as supporting the consolidation of cluster initiatives,” said Deputy Minister Saúl Pineda.

In addition, the Mayor of Medellin, Federico Gutiérrez, stressed that “there is a key factor to increasing productivity and it is not only about resources, because articulation between the public and private sectors and universities is also very important. That is a winning formula to move forward, as in the case of Medellin. Addressing issues of entrepreneurship, innovation and education together allows us to devise an education policy with relevance and quality.”

The first session of the Conference ended with a panel on the future of employment and skill development, in which Luis Felipe López-Calva, regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the UNDP, pointed out: “We often think that economic growth and income distribution are issues that should be analyzed separately, but it is important to recall that both are determined simultaneously. It is therefore imperative to think about skill development and quality education as ways to provide individuals with instruments so that they can contribute more actively to the economic growth of our region.”  

On Thursday the 8th, participants discussed strategic issues such as the potential of commodities to generate competitive advantages; innovation as a driver of productivity; logistics platforms and digital transformation; development based on creativity; and political consensus and institutions in building a productivity pact.

CAF Conference: Productivity and Innovation for Development also featured Kyoo Sung Noh, CEO of the Korea Productivity Center; Jorge López Lafuente, President of Grupo Jala (Bolivia); María Lorena Gutiérrez, President of Corficolombiana; Óscar Cabrera, CEO of BBVA Colombia; Rocío Fonseca, Innovation Manager at CORFO and former CEO at Start-up Chile; Fernando De Fuentes, President of Anima Studios (Mexico); Colombian chef Leonor Espinosa; Eduardo Levy, Dean of the School of Governance of Universidad Torcuato di Tella in Argentina; Luis Marchese Montenegro, President of Peru’s National Society of Mining, Petroleum and Energy; Camilo Romero, general manager at Casa Luker Cacao; Patricio Meller, Project Director of the Corporation of Latin American Studies (CIEPLAN); among others.

You can join the discussion with the hashtag #ProductividadCAF