Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean is go­ing through a dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic, po­lit­i­cal and so­cial phase but has the op­por­tu­ni­ty to change its de­vel­op­ment tra­jec­to­ry to­wards more in­clu­sive growth, with more sus­tain­able in­vest­ment and con­sump­tion pat­terns, Ali­cia B�rce­na, the ex­ec­u­tive eec­re­tary of the Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (Eclac) said dur­ing the XX An­nu­al Con­fer­ence of CAF � De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca.

The se­nior Unit­ed Na­tions of­fi­cial added that the macro­eco­nom­ic tool­box must be ex­pand­ed to in­clude fis­cal poli­cies that put greater em­pha­sis on tax eva­sion and avoid­ance, which in the re­gion rep­re­sents 6.7 per cent of re­gion­al gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP). In ad­di­tion, she in­di­cat­ed that the world needs a ma­jor im­pe­tus based on the co­or­di­nat­ed ex­pan­sion of ex­ter­nal de­mand, which should in­volve greater fi­nan­cial and mon­e­tary stim­u­lus to re­ac­ti­vate economies glob­al­ly.

"In this con­text, a big en­vi­ron­men­tal push should al­so be pro­mot­ed to en­sure tech­nol­o­gy reach­es all lev­els of the econ­o­my and so­ci­ety," B�rce­na said as one of the main speak­ers on the pan­el "Is Latin Amer­i­ca at a Turn­ing Point? Fu­ture De­vel­op­ment Chal­lenges," which was held in Wash­ing­ton in the frame­work of the CAF meet­ing.

On that oc­ca­sion, B�rce­na al­so in­sist­ed on the im­por­tance of the re­gion join­ing the process­es of tech­no­log­i­cal con­ver­gence that are tak­ing place in the world to jump-start pro­duc­tion and em­brac­ing the chal­lenge of car­ry­ing out pro­gres­sive struc­tur­al change, with sus­tain­abil­i­ty and equal­i­ty at the cen­tre.

"Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean par­tic­i­pates ac­tive­ly in the tech­nol­o­gy of con­sump­tion, but not of pro­duc­tion. It is im­per­a­tive that we in­cor­po­rate our­selves in­to the fourth in­dus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion that is un­der way as ac­tors, rather than spec­ta­tors," B�rce­na in­di­cat­ed at the pan­el that was mod­er­at­ed by En­rique Garc�a, pres­i­dent of CAF.

The oth­er speak­ers in­clud­ed En­rique V. Igle­sias, the for­mer Ibero-Amer­i­can Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al; Au­gus­to de la Torre, the World Bank's Chief Econ­o­mist for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean; Ale­jan­dro Wern­er, Di­rec­tor of the West­ern Hemi­sphere De­part­ment at the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF); and Ale­jan­dro Fox­ley, Pres­i­dent and Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of the Cor­po­ra­tion for Latin Amer­i­can Stud­ies (CIEPLAN) and a for­mer Chilean Fi­nance Min­is­ter.