President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, other important regional leaders and hundreds of businesspeople will participate starting tomorrow in the International Economic Forum of the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF), in Panama City. The event aims to be a version of the World Economic Forum, held in Davos, and takes place amid pressure from Donald Trump on the region.
“There is a great expectation that this forum can be consolidated as a forum for regional discussion. It is not an alternative, but an important complement to Davos”, says ambassador Alexandre Peña Ghisleni, director of the Department of Economic, Financial Policy and Services at Itamaraty.
Representatives from 300 exporting companies in the region and 150 international buyers, from countries such as the USA, China, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea and India, are expected for the business round scheduled for the 29th and 30th.
Opportunity with security!
In addition to Lula and the Panamanian president, José Raúl Mulino, the presidents of Bolivia, Rodrigo Paz; from Ecuador, Daniel Noboa; and the elected president of Chile, José Antonio Kast, among other heads of state. It will be Lula’s first face-to-face meeting with the recently elected Paz and Kast, conservatives who respectively succeed Luis Arce (Bolivia) and Gabriel Boric (Chile), both left-wing.
Trump’s stance and the situation in Venezuela should dominate conversations outside the official agenda.
“It is interesting that the forum takes place in Panama, which was Trump’s first target in Latin America with the threat of resuming the canal”, says Lucas Souza Martins, professor of international relations and researcher at Temple University, in the USA.
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Lula’s agenda, who spoke with Trump yesterday and is expected to visit Washington next month, includes a visit to the Panama Canal. According to Itamaraty, Brazil is the 15th largest user of the canal, through which 7 million tons of Brazilian exports pass every year. Recently, Brazil adhered to the Protocol to the Treaty on the Neutrality of the Panama Canal, which still depends on ratification by Congress. The text provides that the channel must be open, safe and neutral for all civil and military ships.
“This is very important for freedom of navigation and trade”, says Gisela Padovan, secretary of Latin America and the Caribbean at Itamaraty.
The expectation of the Project Director of the Brazilian Center for International Relations (Cebri), Fernanda Cimini, who will be at the event, is the response of the region’s leaders to the risk of rupture in the system of international rules:
“The question is whether we understand that we are in the context of rivalry, that Latin America needs to position itself so as not to be just a zone of American influence.”
Organized crime
She draws attention to the discussion about violence and organized crime and the impact on the region’s economy:
“Organized crime affects investment, predictability, politics and democracy”, she says, remembering that the problem is also one of the reasons given by Trump to justify US interventions. “He doesn’t talk about communism, he talks about the fight against trafficking.”
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On the bilateral agenda, Lula must sign the Investment Cooperation and Facilitation Agreement with Panama. The treaty establishes rules for the protection of investments. The Central American country is currently the seventh largest investment destination for Brazilian companies, with a stock of almost US$9.5 billion, according to Gisela Padovan.
The International Economic Forum Latin America and the Caribbean is organized by CAF and has a media partnership with GLOBO and Valor Econômico.
(reporter for Valor Econômico)
