 So, good morning. It's a pleasure to be here to moderate this panel on the future of Latin America. We have an extremely distinguished panel, starting with President Cartes Jara from Paraguay, who is the Secretary General of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, Angel Gurria, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, former Minister of Finance of Mexico, former everything. Rebeca Greenspan, who is the Secretary General of the Iber-American Organization, and then former Vice President of Costa Rica, former Minister of Everything in Costa Rica. And we have Moises Naim, who's a distinguished author and now television writer and former director of Foreign Policy Magazine, former Minister of Economic Development in Venezuela, and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. So it's a truly distinguished panel. Latin America is facing a set of challenges in its future. Some of them are endogenous, intrinsic of things that it hasn't done, things that are on its agenda, and some of them are new, associated with changing economic environment. A couple of years ago here in Davos, Moises said that Latin America was not competitive even as a threat. But apparently, Trump thinks otherwise. And now some aspects of Latin American development have become an issue in U.S. domestic policy, and we're going to talk a little bit about that in the course of the discussion, how Latin America should face that challenge, what are its options, and so on. So to start us off, I'm going to ask President Cartes, Latin America right now is having serious growth problems. There's a recession in Brazil. There's a recession in Argentina. There's an economic catastrophe in Venezuela. There's very low growth in Mexico and Colombia. But Paraguay has been growing nicely in spite of the fact that it is surrounded by two countries in recession, and you've been able to continue growing your exports, whether it's soybeans, meat, or electricity, and so you're somewhat of an island of stability in a troubled region. So I want to ask you, what's your secret and can you keep it up? Or what do you need for the region to be like for Paraguay to continue growing? Thank you very much, but I think that there is no secret about it. The last decade, we had a favorable win, as we said, and now has really changed. And all we have done is take care of our expenses. But the most important point that I feel in Paraguay has really changed internally and for outside was the transparency law that we have made. That gives us a power that we always thought that the people is really divorced from governments. And I can feel it from inside the country and outside the country that that is putting us much together. Today in Paraguay, everyone can know how much earns every public employee, how much expenses, how much money, how much benefits each one. And that is putting us closer, the people with us. There is no miracle. Today the world is changing so much. And there is no other way than we have to go. The normal question, I remember because I came from the private sector. And the usual question was, what's the difference between private sector and public sector? And today I'm finding that practically it has to be the same thing. We have to take care about the public sector exactly as we do with the private sector. We have to handle what is not our, the money, and the public property. We have to take the same care that we take with our money. Very good. Thank you very much. Angel, you are leading an international organization that's about agreed rules that everybody is supposed to abide by. We're moving into a dynamic where President Trump seems not to believe so much in rules as in deals and to get the best possible deal for his country at every turn. Do you think that international organizations have a role to play in this new world? And if so, how do you think the conflict with these two different views of rules versus deals is going to play out in the coming years? Well, even deals have to be done in the context of a minimum of rules. We've been strident to get rules for the last half century. And we've made a lot of progress on trade. We've made rules. We haven't done very well on investment, by the way. We haven't really been able to deal about investment. And now more and more deals about trade are deals also about investment because trade is, because protection is so, nominal protection in terms of tariffs is so low. Now it's about investor state. Now it's about labor. It's about environmental issues. And it's about regulations, regulations, regulations, whether before or after the customs, etc. But in the particular case of our region, I have to say that given this new wind, we'll have to see how it transforms itself once it's in office, you know, the new administration, effectively go back to the drawing board to the original homework and say, have we made enough progress on the homework? And the answer is no. The result is therefore that this year we shrunk by one, well, last year, 1%, and this year we'll be lucky if we get to 1% positive growth. So the region navigated so well during the crisis, and then is doing so poorly in the after crisis while the rest of the world is kind of catching up. And then even within the region, there are some countries, you know, countries that are doing still, you know, very Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Ecuador, which are basically not growing. And then some countries, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, to a lesser extent Mexico, that are growing. And what is like, in a case like Mexico, why is it defending itself a little better? Well, because it made these very dramatic reforms. And now it's implementing the reforms. And now it is, in a way, enjoying the result of having taken the reforms. When did it take the reforms? It started four years ago. Now it's a 50-year government in Mexico, and they're starting now. And that's compensating for a bunch of other issues having to do with political issues and super structure. And then even the start of the political season in Mexico about, you know, the next election, et cetera. The reforms, in a way, are biting. They're counting, and they're making progress. And they are, as the president of Paraguay just said, we took the reforms, we bit the bullet, we did what had to be done, and now we are enjoying the benefit. Now there are certain things, sir, that I'm just going to say a few words. This is homework. Inequality. Informality. Productivity. Not everything ends with a TTT, but, you know, a lot of it does. The tradeoff between productivity and inclusivity, you know, or inclusiveness. Because if we focus only on productivity, we'll get it wrong. If we focus only on inclusion, it's not going to be enough. So the nexus between the two is absolutely fundamental. How about integration with itself? I mean, we've made more progress in the Alliance for the Pacific in the last two years, or three years, between Peru and Mexico and Colombia and Chile than with all the Aladi and Alalc and this and that and that, you know, for 50 years. Why? Well, there was a need, there was an opportunity, there was a leadership, there was a political courage, and so integration. Now, how about innovation? Another word, we're spending about half a percent, half a percent, 0.7 at most, in innovation. The average of the OECD is two and a half percent, moving to three, average in Sweden is three and a half percent, moving to four, average in Korea is four percent, moving to four and a half. We are competing with countries like Korea. The gap is three points of their respective GDPs per year. And that just, you know, so what are we, we're going to become employees of the Koreans, you know, I don't know, just who is spending on, you know, who is spending on the in the value added change. It is, of course, the knowledge that takes the big, the big chunk of the value added. So skills, skills, skills. Why? Because productivity has dropped, become negative in many of the countries, only starting to resurface in some of the countries, but productivity is a problem in every single major country in the world, but also in our region. And if we do not improve the skills, we're not going to have an improvement in productivity. Taxations are obviously, yes, but why also? It's not just a question of, well, incentives for productivity. With the enormous inequality, that was one of the first words I said. In Europe, in the United States, you apply taxes, you apply social security contributions, you reduce the original inequality by half. In Latin America, you apply the taxes, and you apply the social contributions, and it's like Johnny Walker, you don't see it. No effect. 3% reduction maybe in the genie rather than half. Okay? So again, that is a very, very serious structural change. So let me just finish with one issue that has to do with the last part, institutions. And when you talk about institutions, things like integrity, transparency, and the fight against corruption, why? Because what we have is not only low growth, high unemployment, growing inequalities, but a crisis of trust. Thank you very much. So there was a long smorgasbord of problems and goals. Very good. Let me ask Rebeca. And policy recommendations. Yeah. Well, titles of policy recommendations. Let me ask Rebeca. You've been organizing these meetings of Latin America where Latin America tries to think about its issues, its goals, its problems. The inter-Iber-American organization includes Spain, includes Portugal, it does not include Canada or the U.S., and in that sense, it's different from the OAS, it's different from UNASUR. But I would ask you, what are the themes that Latin America should focus on in light of the current environment in which its relations with the North will tend to be different? No, thank you. Thank you very much, Ricardo. I think that some of the things have been mentioned, but I will try to focus on the things we are focusing in the Iber-American summit. And we have put a very strong focus on education, and especially on higher education. And our problem there is the quality of education. It's not only the expansion of education that has been amazingly rapid during the last decade. Just for the people around us to have an idea, the population at the university level in Latin America has doubled in the last decade. And it's not only that it has doubled, but two-thirds of the students that are in higher education are first time in their family, still first time in their family, that somebody gets to higher education level. So you have these growing middle classes, emerging middle classes, that have gone to higher education with high expectations of getting a better job of being included in the mainstream of development, and there can be frustrated. Their aspirations will be frustrated if we don't do something about the quality of education. Because we know that the return to higher, to university education is declining in the region, precisely because quality has been lagging behind. So the division between those that have been there for a long time and those that are from the higher socioeconomic strata of the region will get the jobs and the good jobs if we don't do something to fight the gap between inequality of education. So we have been saying that the intergenerational transmission of inequality will depend on the quality of education and the access to quality education for the new middle classes, let's say, that have been getting there. Now our second point will be, our second focus will be science and technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship, and the focus on youth when we talk about that. And that's the report represented precisely in the summit on focusing on youth. What we have to do is not, it's true, it's not only higher education, but it's also training skills to open up the possibility of investment for the young people, etc. So that has been a very important focus of the presidents of the summit. And I would say that the third area of focus for us has been what we have to do in infrastructure and to get into the digital society. That will be an aspect of competitiveness that is very important for the region. We have to double our investment in infrastructure. We have to go to a more integrated market in terms of the digital investment in the region. So how can we help to do that? And there is not only Latin America, there, Spain and Portugal are very important because these are countries that are leading in some of the aspects that we need to get to. But it's also very important in terms of investment because in terms of infrastructure, logistics, the digital economy, those countries are very important for Latin America. And Latin America is also investing now in the Iberopitins. My last point is the whole issue of trust that has been brought, the transparency, etc. I think that that is very important because the only way in this atmosphere where we don't have really a wide fiscal space to get this investment done is with public-private association partnerships. But the problem is that the citizenship doesn't believe that these partnerships are done for the better, for the good of everybody. But these are deals between some in the private sector and some in the public sector. And I think that with the scandals that we have been seen in the region with some of the main firms, private firms that have in infrastructure, for example, that is a very important point. So the issue is how do we build up again the trust with citizenship, with the right rules and controls to really be able to do what we have to do to partner with the private sector but really fighting corruption and being much more transparent in terms of our institutions and in our framework of rules. Thank you very much. Moises, do you have also a long list of tools that you want to share or do you want to focus on a few that you think are more critical? So I want to talk about two things. Let me invite you to think about the year 2000 and imagine that today we are in the year 2000. And we have this session about the problems of Latin America. And we invite Angel Burria. Which point of his list would not have been included in the year 2000? It would have been exactly the same list and in fact at some point I smiled because as he was telling the point which is impossible to deny that are very important, I smiled because I was anticipating the point. There is a circularity to our conversations about Latin America. It is a frustrating thing for all of us to keep coming to Davos and other places and recite exactly the same five issues that always are in the list of Latin America. And Angel and others have mentioned them. Not denying their importance, growth anxiety, what are the sources of growth, volatility and so on is one macro stability always and the prescription. Be careful about your deficits, be prudent, manage your exchange rate and so on. The problem of competitiveness, low productivity, low innovation, bad education, bad infrastructure, inequality. Now we talk more about inequality because it has become fashionable in the United States and in Europe. But inequality has always been a big issue for Latin America. And then that brings us to malfunction and democracy. And then the inevitable word appears, institutions. We need to do something with institutions. Nobody knows exactly what that means. Nobody knows exactly how to really strengthen in a permanent, reliable, sturdy way the institutions. And then the perennial. Impossible to have a conversation like this without complaining about corruption. Corruption is always there. It's part of the conversation. And nothing much happens, except in certain instances and so on. So that's, for my first point, is to make an appeal to see if we can go beyond that circular repetitive list and see if we can be more granular and more specific. And that, of course, brings the heterogeneity of Latin America where the conversation at this level does not do a lot of justice to the fact that you have Haiti and Brazil and Mexico and Paraguay in the same conversation and they face very different realities. So that is what we always talk about. I want then to mention what we never talk about, which I think it's a very important issue. And that is Latin America's peaceful coexistence with murder. Latin America has 31 percent, Latin America has 8 percent of the world's population and 31 percent of the murders. Latin America is the most murderous region in the world. War zones are not as dangerous to human life as Latin America. That's an observation of fact that is undeniable. Some countries are worse than other, but murder, peaceful coexistence with murder, accepting that it's part of human nature, it's part of the human condition, that there's not much you can do about it because, you know, it's who we are. Well, that's unacceptable, but it has become acceptable in Latin America. Nobody discusses it. The other thing that we need to recognize is that governments cannot do it. It's obvious that Latin American governments don't know and don't care and or don't have the will or don't have the tools or don't have the knowledge or don't have the incentives to really deal with homicide rates. Imagine that Latin America decides that this peaceful coexistence with homicide has to end and design something like the millennium development goals in which you put numbers. Why don't Latin America decide that in the next five years the murder rate is going to be brought down to by half. We're talking about tens of thousands of murders of people that will be saved. And because governments cannot do it, it has to be a societal project where all of the institutions here in executive powers, the multilateral organizations, the church, the labor unions, the television, the soap opera writers, the universities, the military all decide that this is a very important problem and that the government cannot be left to the government, that all society has to do something about it. That is not part of the conversation. It has never been part of the conversation. It needs to become part of the conversation. Very good. Let me just mention a couple of the things that are also didn't come up in the list that were sort of like maybe implicit, but they're sort of like front page. Why are countries in the region not growing now? The ones that are not growing. Well, the ones that are not growing are not growing because they were exporting commodities. They grew while the commodity prices were high. Commodity prices have gone down, and now they cannot keep on growing because they're insufficient exports. So Latin America needs to export. In the rest of the world, countries have very specific policies to encourage exports beyond higher education, beyond general things about productivity. They have relatively directed policies. For example, Panama has just invested 7% of GDP in the expansion of the canal. That's a public investment in something related to the core export sector. They've done a lot of policies that are designed to carve out the space in the export of services. For example, Costa Rica got to move into Intel and into medical equipment devices and so on, through a targeted policy on those things. We don't have this sense of urgency that we need to act on the creation, the expansion of export activities. Without that, in the short run, we're not going to grow, in the medium term, we're not going to grow. The second one topic we have not talked about, we talk about productivity and so on, informality, but one of the things that is critical to the low productivity of Latin America is that we have some of the most inefficient cities ever. Cities that have, you know, the commute times of Latin America are the highest also, and the willingness to put public investment in creating the infrastructure so that commute times are reasonable. Well, the fact that we don't have that means that women cannot go to work because somebody has to stay home, that it means that the cost of going to work is enormous. We might as well work from home in some informal activity. So in urbanization, the quality of urban life is something where Latin America has been very limited. And the third thing that I think Latin America has been remarkably limited is that everybody complains about skills shortages. Everybody complains about skills shortages. And everybody complains about innovation and entrepreneurship. Now, when you look at the U.S., 52% of the entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley are foreigners. When you look at Harvard, over half of the professors are foreigners. When you look at Latin America, it has some of the most restrictive immigration policies in the world. Trump would pass Latin American immigration laws. So we are restricting our ability. He would love to be as close as 3.5% of the world's population was born outside of their home country. 1% of Latin America was born outside of their own country. And you have countries like Colombia where 0.2% of the population was born abroad. And these countries have immigration policies that are more restrictive than countries that are sexy to go to. So part of our skills shortage is our closeness, our capacity to bring people in. And this is cheap. And this is quick. So it's something that we are not currently doing. So let me go back to the panel and ask the panel for some quick wins that can be done in Latin America now that don't imply these long-term solutions with things like institutions but quick wins which are on the table now. I think that the word efficiency is really the most important word that we have to assume. As he said, Moses, probably corruption we are talking about corruption 50 years ago. But I think it's the worst enemy we have. Even when we had winning favor, now it's worse. But if we are not efficient, today is going to be much worse than before. What is doing in Paraguay and why are we growing? Because we maintain and we are trying to be more efficient every day. There is a point that I don't want to put away that what he was talking about, homicide. And it's not my words but I remember one minute, Panama's president says that today in Central America, there are more murders through the narco traffic than in all the wars around the world. And there is a mistake that we have to be honest and assume it once again. Narco traffic is a transnational crime and we don't assume it transnational. Every country is doing its best but we have to talk between countries and to act because the best crime we have where the homicides are occurring is narco traffic. And we still didn't assume that compromise to face them. But I think the word is efficiency and productivity, skills. We feel that. We are very proud of our population. We got very many young people. Again, 74% of our population are less than 35 years old. And they need skills. We are very lucky that the industry that are coming into far away, they teach them and our young people learn very fast. But definitely we have to assume that education skills are not tremendous that we have. I'm sorry we're boring, Moises. But frankly, what he said is pretty dramatic. It's also true and that is why we have to keep at it. We have to keep repeating these things because they change. The headlines are the same but the nature and the urgency because there are some progress and there is some progress. There is some transformation. There are some anti-corruption laws that are put in place. There is some battle against drug traffickers. But we just have to keep integration, the question of productivity, the question of if we do not attend to the fundamentals. And we have not because we had a wonderful ride at least before the crisis hit. Even after the crisis hit the raw materials kept very high. So we kept the ride going on. Every time we've had the ride we forgot about the fundamentals and we did not focus on the fundamentals. So we must come back even though they're boring. You're saying these are not quick wins. These are long-term processes. I want some quick wins. Yeah but I'm going to say I absolutely don't agree with you that you tell us that there's a quick win idea. I think this is slogging. We're going to slog it. We're going to go through it. It's 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration because we know what has to be done. There are things like crime. I remember we were asked why was it that in 1968 in France one people died because they were watching the parade from the floor from a roof and they fell or something like that. And in Mexico about you know officially 500 people died and perhaps more. Malro said because in Mexico the death was always there. It's fantastic you know but it is also about the nature. There are some of the problems that we're fighting but also the fact that we are now so I think you said cities, cities, cities. We are the only region in the world where we became fully urbanized without becoming industrialized. Fully urbanized before becoming developed. And what we have is that the cities are part of the problem now because of the sprawl and because of all the you know the human implications, the economic implications, the productivity implications, the services implications of cities sprawling. But I would go back to the fundamentals and even peculiar fundamentals. Skills, yes, innovation absolutely but innovation if badly handled in the case of countries like Latin America can fire or displace 40% of the low skilled population that we have you know and therefore how does one deal with things like innovation to make it a leverage for growth and development rather than a threat to the low skilled working class. Do you have some quick wins? I have some quick wins but I will make two comments before. One is I don't agree with Moises either. I think that the point that Moises made about murders and violence is a very important one. I don't deny it. Most of those murders are between gangs. If you think about Caracas maybe not but if you think about what Mala Salvador and Honduras is between gangs when there was a peaceful agreement between in Mexico yes when you when Salvador went into a peaceful agreement between gangs the murder rate just dropped and when we had lost to contain arms small arms also the murder rate dropped but it's very difficult to have a sensible arms loss when you have the frontier in Mexico where you can just get any weapon you want in in the site of the of the U.S. So I go to your point that is yeah we will need more than only our countries to really fight you know the the criminal rates in in Latin America we need the U.S. and we need to engage with the U.S. in a meaningful a conversation that doesn't seem to be in the agenda but but that's a very important point. This is not a quick win but I think that is very important but you put it like you know the whole society has been and I think that the narcotraffic and human traffic is a very very difficult transnational crime and we have to have a much more help also in that transnational setting to really fight crime but my second point with Moises is that you put like nothing happens since 2000 because we have the same agenda and it's not true let me give you an example quality of education has been always important but in the agenda quality of education was not really very high access to education was very high but not quality of education there was disbelief that if you want the first you have access and then you have quality and now we have to put them together and we know that I really think that your your very half a half empty a glass is a bit biased but let me go to the quick wins gender equity yeah give women a chance in in Latin America put them in management positions really high management positions in the private sector give them the same salary for same education with men and you will have a drop in poverty and much more a really hiking productivity and that's that's a quick win that's not too hard to do you it's hard culturally but quick in the sense that you have the talent there you have the people there you have everything you need but you have to take really action for gender equity second second win mobility intra-regional mobility of talent and that's something we are working on for students for firms for a and we call it talent mobility in iber america that's a very very high in the agenda we are working very hard with the migration institutions and with the with the private and in the public sector i think that we will get something done there and third quick win the whole investment infrastructure and logistics because we know more or less what what we have to do we know where to do it and we know that we have to do it locally we have to do a lot of investment in cities and i think that one point that the region has a is much better now than it was before is that now we have elected governments at the local level at the local level so we have very good leadership also at the city level so if we are able really to empower the cities to make the investment infrastructure that we need i think that we can have very quick wins there also so three things thank you in moises i i i want to go to the audience but i'm not going to let you go before you tell us something about some of the lessons that latin america should take and some of the responsibilities that latin america should consider regarding the economic and social and political catastrophe in venezuela what are the lessons one of the lessons is that we always think when when we say failed state we think of a very very very poor country probably somewhere in africa landlocked without resources and here we have a very large country venezuela that has the largest reserves of oil in the world that has all the trappings of modernity the skyscrapers and infrastructure and banks and everything it looks like a modern country but in fact today i think objectively you could say that venezuela is a failed state the government the state is incapable of discharging the basic functions that a state has to perform and so that's a surprise and it's very interesting and sad because it's very difficult to fix the second lesson is that the the stealthiness of of autocracy these days it has become very fashionable even for dictators to try to look like democrats that is why latin me put it has elections and has the duma and has all of the choreography of democracy but in fact we know that russia is a highly highly centralized autocratic nation and the same is in venezuela for many years ugo chaves got away with the notion that that was a democracy that elections were being held all the time that they had a congress and the independent media and the independent judiciary and none of that was true really uh those were captured co-opted or institutions by the central government that essentially uh converted venezuela in what is a post modern 21st century autocracy that hides behind a mask of democracy so the stealthiness uh of autocracy in the 21st century in and that's not just true in venezuela i think we can see it in a lot of countries where democracy is uh it it would be hard to really think of them as democracies where the checks and balances and free and fair elections sort of take place but they get away with being perceived like that the third and very sad one of course is to discover how complacent in different bystandings is the international community uh if you want to be really really cynic about venezuela venezuela is undergoing a human humanitarian crisis of the first order venezuela belongs with Haiti in terms of the disaster the human disaster that is taking place but that is not part of the conversation that is not known and if you want to be very cynic as i was saying you could argue that venezuela had the bad luck of having to compete with syria and the refugee crisis uh if we if we did not have syria and the refugee crisis perhaps the media and the leaders of the world and of latin america would have paid more attention to a country where all of this is happening where they are detaining uh political the political opposition and torturing people and and people are literally starving um and and and the differences especially sad for uh for venezuelans who who helped other latin american countries at the time in which they were under uh dictatorships and now we see some of them are in government and we cannot get them to act uh there's a very specific case there in chile president bachelet would would be very helpful if she can help free some political prisoners some of whom i have to say that ricardo's houseman's brother-in-law is in jail and he's a journalist his crime is to have posted a video of a group of people in a village protesting against president maduro next thing that happened uh bravo hattar this is his name uh has been jailed uh and impossible and we have been trying and ricardo's family has been trying to get uh people like the chileans that were given uh refuge in venezuela during the worst time and we have not been able to to mobilize the latin american community i'm sorry if i'm being very granular and specific about this uh but i think granularity is deserved in this case okay thank you um before we go to the audience i have uh one quick win uh and in an amazing success story and that has very positive externalities for the region uh prodigo janiot the prosecutor general of brazil is in the audience uh he's led the car wash investigation in brazil and now there's a lot of information coming out about corruption in latin america in quantities that we would not have imagined before and with detailed information that provides a lot of uh possibilities for the fighting corruption in the rest of the region so i want to ask him to to say a few words thank you mr hausman to the opportunity to say two words here my english is very limited so i will speak in portuguese and my colleague helped me in translation it's a big challenge for our institution to face those threats in the moment of the fight against corruption in brazil brazil whether it's from the public ministry whether it's from the judiciary taking into consideration what said mr president of paraguay and mr guria from all ecd these achievements of the brazilian prosecution service is due to the independent independence and autonomy of the prosecutors in brazil and the judges the courts as well is the brazilian public ministry works in a transparent way with integrity and efficiency in the application of the norms that we have for the fight against corruption the prosecutors in brazil try to work with integrity transparency to enforce the brazilian laws and the rule of law in our country i would like to stress two main points which allowed us to to advance in our fight the independence and autonomy of the ministry the public prosecution service in brazil before the government and the cooperation between the latino-american public ministries i quote an example of the paraguayan ministry an intense cooperation that we have and also in the scope of the iberan of the iberan american organizations this cooperation has been intense what has allowed us to evolve in this case one very important point is the international cooperation between the prosecutorial agencies in the region for example we have a paraguayan public ministry of paraguayan and we have the iberan american countries which allow us to pursue this but at least the importance of international cooperation in illegal matters for fight those kinds of crimes and the important role of the public prosecution in switzerland to help us to find out funds public funds in belzel and hidden in foreign accounts abroad thank you thank you very much it's being very exciting to watch and it's even very instructive to see how the information generated in brazil how different countries respond to it see where they act on it yes we can very good very good a remarkable example in the region so let me open up to the audience so let me start over there can you present yourself and hasm galal from price waterhouse cooper's i want to follow up on the the point about devolution of power to cities and mayors i mean there are some bright spots like midi gene like like maringa in brazil and i want some feedback from the panel about giving more budgetary powers to the mayors rather than the national level of the state and is this going to work under the current frameworks or is this decentralized corruption okay let me let me take a couple of questions so we get more participation here yes thank you to gato nelson cunningham with the clardy associates in the waning days of the obama administration we're hearing more about the opening toward cuba and the administration has touted the opening toward cuba as having led to a new era of good feeling between latin america and the united states that may or may not be overstated but looking ahead to the trump administration who have announced that they would wish to roll back at least some of the opening and looking at the names of the people who've been floated who might have latin american policy it's quite possible that it will be rolled back my question for the panel is how damaging would that be for us latin american relations to have that move back thank you thank you my name is wei pang i work in agribusiness we source a lot of agricultural commodities from the region and my question is for mr president of paraguay because we've seen a slight pickup of deforestation rates in in some neighboring countries of yours such as brazil probably because of the current economic pressures while we see in your country you have managed very well the deforestation rates and you have also achieved an increase in your commodity exports so do you have any advice for your neighbors on how to balance these two demands and how to better manage their natural resources hi my name is synthia i'm a global shaper from the san jose hub in costarica and i wanted to hear a little bit more about something that miss rebecca rinspen mentioned about gender equity we're speaking about economic growth for latin america and the last mckinsey's studies of the power of parity shows that if latin america mimics at least the the woman participation that chile has for 2025 we would have a 14 percent of gdp growth and if we managed to close the gap totally we would have a 34 4 percent of of gdp growth and also the numbers show that we're having less children in latin america more more women are are the head of the households so all the data is showing that economic growth has to do with with gender and i would like to know how are we preparing in latin america what is our strategy or is is it just in the in the hands of nonprofits and the private sector but how can we be really strategical about this uh very quickly among the long list that has been mentioned low saving rate of the regions any ideas on quick fixes for that thank you okay so uh in the last two minutes of this session i'm i'm going to go around once and i don't want you to answer all of the questions i just want you to say the most interesting you have to interesting you have to say about some of the issues that were raised about one of the issues that were raised president how did you stop the deforestation now we have lost we have law that really takes care very uh with much energy we used to have a deforestation but now the the we got a ministry that really takes care and and you cannot uh we are divided in the two regions in paraguay the east side which is zero deforestation on the west side you have to have a permission and if you don't respect it's directly jail okay uh devolution decentralization it is not a panacea watch it pay close attention mr renzi added to his referendum about the senate the question of reversing devolution i think that that is why he lost the referendum i think well there may have been other things but he piled up too many things but this one he got all the people in the regions and all the governors and all mayors against because well obviously you know they probably had to disappear in the senate but the question of devolution was too much now in brazil i remember uh when uh minas Gerais uh defaulted and uh fernando rica cardoso had to uh put on the lay the responsibility that fiscal uh now all of us have legislated somehow that states municipalities cannot borrow they cannot borrow in foreign currency but they've been an explosion of local currency and in some cases bankruptcy virtual bankruptcy of uh sub-national and the problem with that is that a state cannot say one of my states went bankrupt although there isn't a legal obligation you go there and you fix it and you try to stop it so in the end you have to be very careful uh about the question of decentralization because with decentralization has to come accountability you cannot have decentralization and forget about it decentralization about the money decentralization about the resources it is about accountability accountability because it is still taxpayers money it is the taxpayers money of all the country not all the local in fact the local typically still in latin america at least do very little at racing water very little racing land tax and very little helping the government the central government's race the federal taxes so watch it be careful decentralization is not the magic word it's an only an instrument and you have to deal with it with caution rebecca just the most interesting among the questions that were asked okay first of all let me say how good it is that now in latin america we know the names of the judges and prosecutors and not the name of the generals and that's a huge quality change for the reader uh with respect to decentralization i would say only that the the the change from monarchy to feudalism is not progress so we need to really be able to balance having a nation and having accountability at the local level i think that it's not possible not to go there for more mayors responsibility and action in terms of political action many of the national leaders now come from the local leadership so it's important to think how to do it well you know it's it's deepening democracy is not formal decentralization of power and i think that that's a difference there is ways to do it well and the the the second is say i would have liked somebody to take the gender question and not only the woman in the panel but i really believe that if we can if we don't continue in the gender equity path we will lose a huge opportunity of talent and possibilities for productivity jumps and for economic growth in the region and a lot of the informality a lot of the unemployment that we are seeing a lot of the poverty we are seeing has to do with women issues so let's take the gender equity agenda central to the political discussion and not like an afterthought after we said everything then it comes gender if we do that we will we will go a long way and lastly i think that really the issue of Cuba is a very important point for the normalization of the relations between Latin America and the U.S. and what was one of the points where the whole Latin America was on one side and the U.S. was in another it would be very sad to see that that will go backward i would i would like to think that that won't happen or to make two points one is concerning your thing about quick victory so things that can be done quickly have consequences i think it's it's a good moment now to relaunch re-energize rethink the pacific alliance that was launched with great effectiveness i thought it was one of the very good initiatives in terms of integration it lost momentum and an interest as different governments came in and and and essentially thought that that was the prior previous government's problem but i think that this is high time for that initiative to to to be relaunch re-energize uh and mobilize again and perhaps include countries that in the past were very very critical uh brazil was very critical of the pacific alliance perhaps with the new government uh we you know that that could be that that can change same i read argentina so do something with the pacific alliance and that that that can be a very interesting point and my final point is it's about something that Mr. Gianniott said and also rebecca echoed and i want to to mention it it's it's it's we need to celebrate the fact that in Guatemala a president was thrown out of office for corruption in following very precise institutional constitutional legal measures in the past that was done as rebecca suggested by the military it was going to be a military coup this was done through a uh a legal process and the same is happening in in in brazil the the initiatives like vajato and others are touching the most powerful individuals of that society in the private sector in the public sector in government politicians and is being done institutionally and the same in other countries so there is a very good thing happening that is new uh that has not been discussed here in the past that that we should welcome and that is the the use of the legal system uh to to have transitions of those in power that are corrupt okay well so we've gone through a long set of issues i hope you've uh seen the diversity of things that are on the agenda of latin america and i hope to see how a lot of progress for next year's doubles on how many new things have been put on the agenda and how many new quick wins have been suggested thank you very much it's so true what moises has said that we are for so many years repeating and repeating the same uh problems the same and i think what brazil occurs i'd rather to see the future with optimist because we always talk about a stronger institution institutionality do you measure what happened in brazil with the public minister with the justice it's really historically i think that is not giving us the reason that we are repeating and repeating because they they gave an example that is really a message for the world and again the world efficiency what are we going to do if we improve our infrastructure if we improve in and skills and education but you are not competitive your people travels and goes somewhere else the country has to make the environment to use his people giving the conditions it's not we have to do all that but we have to create and and and against we have you never have to get tired and fighting again this corruption and transparency is going to be our angel thank you very much thank you