Ser­gio Díaz-Grana­dos,

Ex­ec­u­tive Pres­i­dent of De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (CAF)

With his char­ac­ter­is­tic ge­nius, writer and jour­nal­ist Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez de­fined the great Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean para­dox: on the one hand, the lone­li­ness and dif­fi­cul­ty of be­ing un­der­stood in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and, on the oth­er, a vi­tal­i­ty and iden­ti­ty that cry out to be recog­nised and val­ued on their own terms. The echoes of this re­flec­tion have wan­dered through an old labyrinth for more than a hun­dred years now.

In­hab­it­ed by more than 650 mil­lion peo­ple, own­er of 15 per cent of the Earth’s sur­face and an in­com­pa­ra­ble bio­di­ver­si­ty, we are an in­dis­pens­able source of so­lu­tions to ma­jor glob­al chal­lenges. The re­gion is a key play­er, for ex­am­ple, for food se­cu­ri­ty, en­er­gy tran­si­tion, ecosys­tem con­ser­va­tion and the fight against cli­mate change.

This po­ten­tial cur­rent­ly co­ex­ists with a glob­al con­text marked by the rise of uni­lat­er­al­ism and frag­men­ta­tion. For this rea­son, we need Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean to gen­er­ate new spaces for re­flec­tion that will help it align po­si­tions, add geopo­lit­i­cal promi­nence and be­come a re­gion with its own voice to pro­vide con­crete so­lu­tions.

It is pre­cise­ly to fill this void that CAF is pro­mot­ing the In­ter­na­tion­al Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean 2026, which will bring to­geth­er sev­en heads of state, two No­bel lau­re­ates in eco­nom­ics and more than 2,500 glob­al ex­perts in Pana­ma on Jan­u­ary 28 and 29. Po­lit­i­cal lead­ers, busi­ness­men, aca­d­e­mics and ex­perts will strength­en al­liances, lay the foun­da­tions for growth and po­si­tion the re­gion as a leader in sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.

The fo­rum must be a space to move be­yond di­ag­no­sis and pri­ori­tise projects with re­gion­al im­pact that tran­scend po­lit­i­cal cy­cles. We must dis­cuss smart bi-ocean­ic cor­ri­dors, elec­tri­cal in­ter­con­nec­tions that lever­age our re­new­able en­er­gy mix, and a shared dig­i­tal agen­da that guar­an­tees da­ta sov­er­eign­ty and uni­ver­sal ac­cess. In­te­gra­tion is an eco­nom­ic im­per­a­tive for us to par­tic­i­pate in the glob­al val­ue chains of the 21st cen­tu­ry.

An­oth­er key fo­cus of the fo­rum will be how to lever­age our com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tages, such as be­ing the world’s lead­ing bio­di­ver­si­ty hotspot and a pow­er­house of re­new­able agri­cul­ture and en­er­gy. This in­volves ex­port­ing raw ma­te­ri­als and lead­ing the tran­si­tion to a cir­cu­lar bioe­con­o­my, cli­mate-smart agri­cul­ture, and sus­tain­able man­age­ment of our oceans and forests. We must align our po­si­tions to at­tract in­vest­ments that trans­form re­sources in­to high-val­ue green prod­ucts.

The re­gion’s po­ten­tial co­ex­ists with long-stand­ing chal­lenges, es­pe­cial­ly those re­lat­ed to so­cial de­vel­op­ment. Growth can­not be sus­tain­able if it is not in­clu­sive. The deep in­equal­i­ties that char­ac­terise our so­ci­ety are our Achilles’ heel. There­fore, we need to delve deep­er in­to how to build mod­ern ed­u­ca­tion sys­tems ca­pa­ble of de­vel­op­ing the tal­ent de­mand­ed by a con­stant­ly chang­ing mar­ket, and how to de­sign mod­ern and ef­fi­cient so­cial safe­ty nets. Fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion, for­mal em­ploy­ment, and clos­ing gen­der and eth­nic gaps are strate­gic in­vest­ments in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and so­cial sta­bil­i­ty.

Re­gion­al mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism must demon­strate its con­tin­ued rel­e­vance. The 2026 In­ter­na­tion­al Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum will be the place to ask dif­fi­cult ques­tions, ex­am­ine suc­cess­es and fail­ures, and lis­ten to pro­found pro­pos­als. We do not seek uni­for­mi­ty of thought, but rather the con­struc­tion of a shared strate­gic vi­sion. Be­cause, as we know well, there are more things that unite us than di­vide us.

In these times of glob­al con­flict and ten­sion, it will be im­por­tant to re­dis­cov­er the Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean mag­ic that can help to align our po­si­tions and project our re­gion as a bea­con of so­lu­tions to the con­tem­po­rary chal­lenges of glob­al de­vel­op­ment.