Growth is the condition of the need for social and economic well -being, but this postulate today can only go through a path, that of equity and sustainable development. For this reason, the immediate future of Latin America and the Caribbean is a mirror in which the rest of the world is also seen. The region has the unavoidable urgency of accelerating the increase in its GDP, which this year will be 2.5%, below the global average. That objective, however, also contains a series of crucial challenges such as energy transition, social cohesion, the fight against organized crime or territorial integration. These are the background reflections that move the organized in Panama City by Caf-Banco de Development of Latin America and the Caribbean, the Group Misar and World in Progress (WIP).
The first day of the conclave, which some 1,500 participants have attended on Wednesday, has deepened in the diagnosis and has reviewed the challenges of an economic landscape in which concerns and hopes intermingle. Of the political balances that lurk the subcontinent – the host president has claimed without nuances the sovereignty of the Panama Canal before Donald Trump’s threats – to structural problems such as violence, which in addition to suffocating the population is a monumental burden for public and private coffers. But also the opportunities. As CAF Executive President has stressed, this is a “solutions” region that also has all the necessary resources to grow, recalled the president of Hurry, to warn about the lack of “private savings and investment”.
The search for solutions was precisely the thread of the forum, which has been compared to a “Latin American Davos” on different tables. The question was repeated from panel to panel: how do the growth path resume? For different regional leaders and many of the 250 speakers from 15 countries summoned in Panama, the answer can only be found in Latin America and the Caribbean, a kind of laboratory for the global economy. From this majority consensus a path is opened to find formulas to grow.
“On reality, and from this break it is very difficult to agree,” said Pepa Bueno, director of El País, in a dialogue with economists and experts such as Carlos Felipe Jaramillo, vice president of the World Bank, or José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs , Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). But that consensus exists and is a fundamental starting point, as is the agreement on the need to increase productivity. “Development is not an ideological issue, it is neither right -wing or left. In a world as polarized as today, you just have to understand that states have one role, another companies, and each one has to do their part, ”said the president of Paraguay, Santiago Peña.
“But the matter is not only what occurs, but how Rebeca Grynspan, general secretary of the United Nations Conference on Commerce and Development, who stressed” an essential triad for the region “said,” : Investment in infrastructure, digitalization and capacities. Stanley Motta, president of the Board of Directors of Copa Holdings, emphasized cooperation between the public and private sector and in the urgency of investing in decent jobs and quality education.
To these perspectives a reflection on the regional integration of the hand of the hand was added. “Latin America and the Caribbean should have a different relationship with Europe? Yes. But should I follow him as a model? I think no, ”he said in reference to the excesses of the bureaucracy that sometimes overshadow the path to the future. And this is a key moment in which Latin America has to focus on the future, immediately already medium and long term. In a press conference at the end of the last presentation, Díaz-Granados warned that climate change is a ballast for the development that the region seeks. “We have to prepare well for what is coming. Only last year the economic losses for this crisis were around 7,000 million dollars, ”he lamented.
CAF expanded 15% its portfolio between 2021 and 2024 and institution analysts expect this year to maintain the tendency to increase 5% more. “We are the great Alcancía of Latin America,” Díaz-Granados joked. Asked about Donald Trump’s return to the White House and the departure of the Republican tycoon from the Paris Agreement, the Bank president was cautious: “The absence of a subject as important as the United States that worries us, but we have to wait for The evolution of these decisions. ”
Ecologists are not the only ones who are tired that in the large climatic forums they are reduced to a greeting to the green flag. The Minister of Environment of Panama, Juan Carlos Navarro, was very critical in one of the parallel sessions with the lack of “urgency” of decision makers. “Scientists and environmentalists seek the output to extinction while around us destroy the world. There is a lack of urgency, including those who are going to give presentations in COP. Look what happened in Cali… ”, said referring to the fact that COP16 was suspended without all the expected agreements being reached. “Welcome to the new reality, climate change is real. But are solutions real and effective? I don’t believe it, ”he settled.
For the minister, the essential solutions to alleviate the ravages of the climatic crisis are two: stop destroying the planet and its biodiversity and expedite the transition to renewable energies. In 2024, Panama lost about one billion dollars as a result of drought. “Although we are a negative carbon country [que absorbe más carbono del que emite]we are the first to pay the broken dishes, ”he added. This Thursday, the debate will continue hand in hand with the sociologist and climate exchange expert Laura Richardson, generates withdrawal from the United States Army, or Rachel Adams, founder and CEO of the Global Governance Center of Artificial Intelligence.
