THE PROMOTION OF PUBLIC POLICIES IN LATIN AMERICA

For more than 60 years, ECLAC contributes to the economic and social development of Latin America, conducting promotion actions aimed to strengthen the economic relations between the countries of the area.

Author: Javier Sota 

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC – CEPAL in Spanish) is one of the five regional commissions of the United Nations, created in 1948 to contribute to the economic and social development of this region. Its headquarters are located in Santiago de Chile and the institution has two regional offices (Mexico and Port of Spain) and five national offices (Bogotá, Brasilia, Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Washington D.C.).

The Spanish Cooperation works with ECLAC for several years, and their collaboration is based on a Framework Agreement from 2006, strengthening a previous agreement dated 1992. Each year, the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) approves a subsidy to be allocated to CEPAL, to support some of their activities. Thus, the last subsidy from 2015 is aimed to support three different components.

The first component gives the possibility to work with the Gender Equity Observatory for Latin America and Caribbean. This Observatory, created in 2007, focuses its efforts on achieving a high degree of autonomy for women (physical, economic and in decision making) as a fundamental factor to guarantee the exercise of their rights in a context of full equality. During the next two years, Spanish Cooperation will be supporting the efforts of ECLAC to strengthen the capacity of Latin American countries in relation with the functioning of pension systems. For that, diagnostics are being performed on gender gaps within pension systems in the region, systematization and exchange of experiences with European countries, and the elaboration of policies’ recommendations that can be incorporated to the design of new pensions reforms projected for the next few years.

The second component is aimed to strengthen the design and implementation of fiscal policies elaborated by the governments of the region. With the aim to reinforce and renew the fiscal pact for equality, ECLAC fosters agreements and suggests policies regarding, on one hand, tax reforms, especially the income tax and, on the other hand, the financing of social expenditure, mainly for pensions and health. To boost the reform of public policies in this field, studies, seminars and workshops are being performed, and technical materials are disseminated through the website of the Fiscal Observatory of Latin America and the Caribbean (OFILAC).

In this line, the XXVIII Regional Seminar of Fiscal Policy has been celebrated last march in Santiago de Chile where was displayed the fiscal panorama and the tax statistics of Latin America and the Caribbean for 2016, collecting homogeneous information of the tax collection of 22 countries from Latin America. The different presentations and debates have been structured around a reflection on the role filled by the tax policy in the region. Among the main conclusions, appeared the need from the public sector, to improve the institutional capacity in order to evaluate and optimize investment projects able to enhance the growth potential. The importance of quality of public finances better adapted to the rules has also been raised. Other important challenge examined during the event: the problem of tax evasion and tax avoidance, stressing on the need to see it as an international coordination issue and not only as a domestic problem. Globally, the difficulty to establish guidelines in the area has been highlighted, given the great diversity of situation among countries.

The third component of ECLAC’s action is related to the development of skills in public management, in order to strengthen the technical capacities of the region’s public officers concerning finances and national and sub-national planning. Through the ILPES and in collaboration with the four Formation Centers of Spanish Cooperation (Antigua, Cartagena de Indias, Santa Cruz de la Sierra and Montevideo) ten international courses have been scheduled in the planning area and sectors such as digital government, public leadership, perspective and multilevel governance. Public and private actors participate to these courses, fostering the exchange of experiences and best practices between experts, public officers and the academic sector.

Evaluations are regularly carried on to improve these Programmes. The most recent is the Joint Evaluation of the Cooperation Programme AECID-CEPAL 2010-2012 which has confirmed the high degree of pertinence and efficiency of the activities developed, as well as the high coherency and consistency of the programmatic design and the outstanding contribution to transformation of personal, organizational and public policies’ capacities in the countries of the region.

This post has been written for the Blog Society Blog. To read the original article, please follow this link:http://www.societygov.org/en/2016/07/26/the-promotion-of-public-policies-in-latin-america/