SELA analyzes world scenarios for the year 2010

Caracas, 18 March. A select group of Latin American and Caribbean experts will meet in Brasilia on 18 and 19 March to analyze possible world scenarios for the year 2010 in an effort to identify the guidelines for the region’s international economic agenda over the medium and long terms.

This forecasting exercise was organized jointly by the Latin American Economic System (SELA), a regional organization whose headquarters are in Caracas, and the Secretariat for Strategic Matters of the Presidency of the Republic of Brazil.

The session programmed for 18 March will focus on the scenarios to be faced by Brazil at both the national and international level. A number of renowned Brazilian specialists will be participating, including Helio Jaguaribe.

On 19 March, the SELA Permanent Secretariat will present an analysis of the macrotrends of the international system over the long term, placing particular emphasis on challenges as well as opportunities for the region, coupling this with the short and medium-term negotiation scenarios that will emerge for Latin America and the Caribbean.

SELA officials pointed out that international economic relations are currently "in an extraordinarily dynamic moment, propelled by globalization and regionalism, and further buttressed by relationships based on power and the quest for the well-being and development of the people."

The process provides for "a tightly interwoven stage" whose actors are the States, transnational companies, international institutions, and non-governmental organizations.

Globalization goes hand in hand with yet another equally significant process in the political realm, namely, "the growing reassertion of democracy as the both vehicle for government and for the ethical value code, along with respect for human rights, including the right of development." Nonetheless, in the real world, "serious deficiencies in the area of social equity are evidenced" in the form of unemployment, poverty and exclusion.

In its attempt to discern what the world may be like in the year 2010, the Secretariat of SELA deemed that "significant changes will take place on the international scenario", and these will lead to "increasing intensity of uncertainties" accompanied no less than by "greater risks in decision-making."

SELA’s Permanent Secretary, Ambassador Carlos Moneta, clarified one point in this respect: "This process of change is moving at a very fast pace, oftentimes juxtaposed and contradictory." According to Moneta, "the interests involved are endless and these do not always coincide."

The dynamic of the international environment "has strong repercussions vis-à-vis the various negotiation spheres to be dealt with by Latin America and the Caribbean in the short and medium terms." Two examples suffice to make this overwhelmingly clear: this year negotiations for the creation of a hemispheric free trade area will start, and the first Latin American-European Summit has been scheduled for 1999.

The Seminar in Brasilia forms part of the SELA Work Programme which, pursuant to the decision of its 27 Member States, provides for the preparation of analyses of the external relations of Latin America and the Caribbean with their main economic and trade partners, their links and possible medium-term scenarios.

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