Cardoso, Foxley focus on development challenges for Latin America

Book presented at the IDB takes stock of region’s achievements, pending reforms, Latin America has made a lot of progress in the past decade by achieving macroeconomic stability, ensuring democracy and reducing poverty levels. However, the region still faces important developmental challenges ranging from improving education and health services to reforming labor markets and its political institutions.

These were the main themes addressed by panel of influential scholars and specialists on the region’s development during a seminar held today at the headquarters of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

The event marked the launching of the book: A Medio Camino Nuevos Desafíios de la Democracia y del Desarollo en América Latina (Halfway: New Challenges for Democracy and Development in Latin America), edited by former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Chile’s former minister of finance and foreign affairs Alejandro Foxley. The IDB, the United Nations Development Programme and the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation and Development financed the research project.

IDB President Luis Alberto Moreno opened the event, which had Cardoso, Foxley as main speakers. Panelists included Columbia University economist Albert Fishlow and Mauricio Cárdenas, director of the Latin American Initiative at the Brookings Institution.

Moreno said the main challenge the region faces today is to fight the immediate impacts of the global financial crisis while implementing measures to achieve its long-term term development goals and ensuring that recent social and institutional progress are preserved.

“We must not only support countercyclical policies and social safety nets needed to fight the crisis but also take advantage of opportunities to push for the necessary reforms,” Moreno said.

Cardoso stressed the region’s signal achievements such as overcoming hyperinflation and cementing democracy after decades of dictatorships. The region is now better prepared to face the ongoing global financial crisis, he said.

“The current crisis is about development and not about our finance system like in past crises,” Cardoso said. “We have learned how to deal with our external debt. We have the conditions to create the mechanisms that will allow us to bring back economic growth.”

Cardoso said public safety is becoming a key development challenge that must be addressed by policymakers in the region. Foxley, who also participated in the seminar, highlighted the importance of reforming the labor markets to reduce informality and investing in infrastructure to prepare countries for faster growth in coming years.

Cardoso’s and Foxley’s book addresses key issues affecting the region’s current situation and prospects, such as challenges to institutions and democratic governability, globalization, climate change, economic growth, macroeconomic management, institutional development and the political economy of government spending and social policies.

The Fernando Henrique Cardoso Foundation of Brazil and Corporación de Estudios para Latinoamérica (CIEPLAN) of Chile managed a team of researchers that prepared the book.