Contributions from Uruguay after the presidency of Redibero

Uruguay has transferred the Presidency of the Redibero to Costa Rica after a year of work, the achievement of a new cooperation with the IDB, the link with the network of agencies in West Africa and the Caribbean, among other actions.

In the framework of the XI China Lac 2017 business summit, and with Punta del Este as the scenario, Uruguay XXI transferred  the Presidency of the RedIbero to  its Costa Rican counterpart Procomer, elected to perform this function during the Directors' last meeting of the year of the Ibero-American agencies, in which the new venues, themes and meetings of 2018 were also agreed, which will be carried out in Spain, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic.

Uruguay XXI leaves the presidency of the Network after achieving its link with the network of agencies in West Africa, through the signing of a memorandum of understanding with UEMOA, and with the network of Caribbean agencies CAIPA.

With the collaboration of Procolombia and Proecuador, Uruguay XXI managed to obtain a new technical cooperation for the Redibero with the IDB, for a total of USD 760,000, which will be executed in the next 30 months and which will contribute to enrich the regional experience through the attraction of investment to the region; value-added exports and the impact measurement of the promotional actions of the promotion agencies.

During 2017, fulfilling one of the objectives of integrating more countries in the region, the investment agencies of Chile (Invest Chile) and Costa Rica (Cinde) were incorporated into the Network, and work is being done so that the next meeting of Caipa will integrate the Caribbean countries that do not belong to the RedIbero.

At the twenty-ninth meeting of RedIbero in Punta del Este, business and investment opportunities between Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean were analyzed, and a collaboration was also carried out, with the collaboration of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the OECD, impact measurement workshop in which different methodologies were analyzed to evaluate the promotion management promoted by each agency.

In addition, academic studies were presented on business opportunities for the region in the Asian market and success stories of trade with China from Costa Rica, Brazil and Mexico.

New presidency, several challenges

At the moment of assuming the presidency of the RedIbero for the period 2018-2019, the director of Procomer, Pedro Beirute, affirmed that for Costa Rica this management represents "a challenge, a commitment and a challenge". "We assume two commitments: to continue the good work that Uruguay has done in these two years and, on the other hand, to innovate, to have a culture of continuous improvement to continue contributing to integration, to share good practices to achieve improvements in the conditions that facilitate intraregional trade and investment. "

Costa Rica also takes up the challenge of including issues related to gender equity on the agenda of the Network. Beirute said: "One of our responsibilities as promoters of trade and investment is to see where the world is going to identify the trends that humanity is following. One of these trends is precisely gender equity and the inclusion of women in global trade processes. That is why it is our responsibility to establish the policies, programs and opportunities for that to materialize and for Latin America not to be left behind. The influence of women in companies is positive, as indicated by studies carried out by the OECD and the World Bank, among other organizations. These studies show that the countries with the highest level of gender equity have the best levels of productivity and competitiveness ".

Objectives met and new collaborations

The execution of the second BPR (Regional Public Good) to be carried out by the RedIbero with the IDB's technical cooperation over the next three years will continue under the management of Uruguay XXI. According to Federica Gómez Decker, specialist of the IDB's Trade and Investment Division, one of the objectives set out in the first instance was to increase the capillarity of the RedIbero, a task that was met with complete success. "In less than two months, we joined Invest Chile and the investment promotion agency of Costa Rica, Cinde, and we are also working very closely with the Caribbean agencies that have expressed their interest and with which Redibero has signed an MOU", he maintained.

Looking to the future, the idea of ​​the IDB is to continue adding investment agencies, to continue transferring good practices. "As an example, we work with the Caipa network which is also a group of investment promotion agencies and where they have developed investment maps, which we think is very interesting to bring to the Network. At the same time we want to offer them, other services that are of interest to you. I think the interesting thing about all this is to think in terms of region and try to democratize access to information so that countries that may not have the resources to draw communication or marketing strategies can be complemented with the RedIbero platform. " he claimed.

Gómez Decker congratulated the team of Uruguay XXI "for the leadership, the call, and the content that they have imposed on the meetings that we have developed during the year, in which progress was made in terms of impact assessment and definition. from a consultant to start establishing a region strategy that we hope will contribute to the region. That was done because there is a team behind that really moves things. "

For his part, Fabricio Opertti, Head of the Trade and Investment Division of the Integration and Trade Sector of the IDB, said that RedIbero is a key collective action space for innovation in terms of promotion. "Collective action generates knowledge transfer, externalities, business opportunities among the same agencies that discover that they can undertake a specific sector. Thus a virtuous circle of applied collaboration is formed. It is not about ethereal collaboration but action plans, because from collective dialogue and learning, then it is analyzed bilaterally by each of the agencies according to their specific needs. We believe in the RedIbero, we have driven it since its genesis and in this new stage we want to continue supporting it in all its innovation and transformation ", underlined Opertti.

Source: Marca País