SELA and CELAC make progress on joint work agenda items for the coming months

The Latin American and Caribbean Economic System (SELA) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) are making progress on issues of common interest in order to design a joint work agenda for the coming months. 

The Permanent Secretary of SELA, Ambassador Clarems Endara, met with the authorities of CELAC, Ambassador Douglas Slater and his deputy Ambassador Andreas Wickham, to discuss the development of productive linkages and the construction of public-private partnerships for disaster risk reduction in Latin America and the Caribbean, as key issues of mutual interest. Human mobility, from an integral vision, is also a topic of common interest, together with the diagnosis of the vulnerability of the region's food systems. 

The technical roundtables to define strategies for regional cooperation in the area of international roaming also form part of the issues of common interest, as well as the digital transformation and sustainable energy infrastructure in the region, which is an area in which CELAC showed great interest in collaborating and working with SELA. 

For their part, CELAC authorities highlighted the need to coordinate efforts to avoid duplication of functions. In this connection, they underscored the importance of the inter-secretariat partnership of the regional integration mechanisms, in order to be more efficient and effective in responding to the needs of the Member States. 

SELA aims to contribute to the presidency pro tempore of CELAC, currently held by Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, in order to build a joint work schedule to facilitate the coordination of efforts in favour of development and integration in Latin America and the Caribbean.