The Latin American and Caribbean Economic System is committed to prioritising regional integration

The Permanent Secretary of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic System (SELA), Ambassador Clarems Endara, stressed in a meeting with the media held on Friday, 2 December, that the regional intergovernmental organisation based in Caracas is committed to advancing in the convergence of integration mechanisms in the region, in order to face the different challenges in economic, trade and social matters.

At SELA's headquarters in the capital city, Endara stressed that the reactivation of the intergovernmental organisation, as a useful mechanism for the 25 member countries, should be based on a common regional strategy to face the main economic, trade and social challenges.

“The economic conditions in the region are adverse. We have seen how, on the one hand, our countries have been affected by the trade confrontation between the US and China, then by the pandemic and now by the situation in Europe. These are our main markets, but what about our neighbours? That is also what we must look at and what we have been working on,” he stressed.

The Permanent Secretary of SELA, who is completing his second year in office (2021-2025), presented part of the work programme for 2023, recently approved at the XLVIII Regular Meeting of the Latin American Council of SELA, highlighting projects related to regional economic integration and a focus on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in SELA's sphere of action.

“When we talk about SMEs, we must consider that they are responsible for 92% of employment in the region,” Endara added.

In addition, among the projects highlighted by the Permanent Secretary of SELA, in partnership with other organisations in the region, are working groups for regional convergence, monitoring of trade and economic performance, as well as the coordination of potential sectors, training with a focus on gender and vulnerable sectors, ecotourism and sustainable development, and support for cultural and creative industries.

“There are 640 million inhabitants in the region, and we are only talking about the member countries of SELA. We are a great market, a great potential that we will only take advantage of with a great platform,” Endara said.

Migrat

On Wednesday, 30 November, as part of the activities for the XLVIII Regular Meeting of the Latin American Council, SELA organized the Forum on Regional integration, perspectives and experiences in Latin America and the Caribbean, which included the participation of former Colombian President Ernesto Samper Pizano, who warned about the need to de-ideologize the issues related to regional integration in order to make progress in key issues such as migration.

In this context, he stressed that SELA would highlight the positive economic impact of migration on the host countries, an aspect with special relevance in the case of Venezuela, whose number of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, according to the R4V platform, totals 7,134,132 Venezuelans.

“There has been progress and what SELA is going to do is to highlight the positive aspect of being able to bring to dialogues the fight for the respect of the human rights of migrants, because there is a clear positive economic impact on the host countries,” he added.