This country is the subregional headquarters of Redlas, dependent on the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), which was established in 1951 and serves 10 countries: Costa Rica, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua , Panama and the Dominican Republic.
It functions as a technical assistance and research center of excellence to advise the governments of the region, at the highest level, in the design, formulation, monitoring and evaluation of public policies, in addition to providing training to public officials in Mexico and Central America.
Hugo Beteta, director of the entity in Mexico, opened the meeting in which he explained that modern, or digital, services have been the most dynamic segment of world trade and can contribute to regional development, environmental sustainability and financial and digital inclusion .
In Mexico, he indicated, services concentrated 43.4 percent of the total employed population, and in the second quarter of 2023, tertiary activities represented 58.2 percent of GDP, while announcing that ECLAC projects growth of the value of regional exports of services of 12 percentage points.
Bateta said that although Mexico has a low direct participation of knowledge-based services, it is actually an important indirect exporter of these contents in its manufacturing exports to the United States.
For his part, the director of the Regional Program Alliances for Democracy and Development with Latin America of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Winfred Weck, pointed out that his client regularly cooperates with Cepal and Redlas, and proposed that academics be incorporated for the following meetings, experts and public policy makers from Europe and Africa.
Armando Sánchez, director of the Economic Research Institute of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, stressed that for academics it is essential to be a link between the productive sector and the government sector with the purpose of applying public policies that benefit the population. .
The XII Redlas Conference is held at UNAM, open to academics, state officials and the general public, and panel sessions related to regional integration in modern services, opportunities for trade agreements and relocation for modern services, contribution of these to sustainable development, and electronic commerce as a driver of regional integration, among others.
The meeting will continue tomorrow with new conferences and panels on the various scheduled topics.
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