SANTIAGO, Chile – In Rio de Janeiro on Monday, authorities inaugurated the first edition of the Maria da Conceição Tavares School of Government and Development, a training initiative that pays tribute to the legacy of one of Latin America’s most important female economists and represents a milestone in historical cooperation between the Brazilian National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES) and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
The training aims to strengthen technical and strategic capacities for development in the region. It seeks to offer a curriculum tailored to the sociocultural and economic specificities of Latin American countries, support the implementation of public policies and sustainable financing strategies, and prepare leaders to engage with the key opportunities and challenges of economic, social and environmental development in the region.
The inaugural ceremony featured keynote lectures by Aloizio Mercadante, president of the BNDES; José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, ECLAC’s executive secretary; and Esther Dweck, Brazil’s minister of management and innovation in public services.
“We are living through a period in which the capacity for international crisis response is very debilitated,” said Aloizio Mercadante, president of the BNDES, putting special emphasis on the climate crisis, challenges related to the digital revolution and the irruption of artificial intelligence, and the erosion of multilateral institutions.
He added that the role of the State is critical for resuming the path to growth and tackling these crises. It is also necessary to defend democracy, putting the issue of inequality at the center of the discussion, and to revitalize regional integration efforts. In this process, development banks represent a hub for promoting innovation and stimulating growth and development, he stated.
Meanwhile, ECLAC’s executive secretary, José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, stressed that Latin America and the Caribbean faces three development traps that limit its ability to move towards more productive, inclusive and sustainable development: a trap of low capacity for growth; another of high inequality, low social mobility and weak social cohesion; and a third involving low institutional capacity and ineffective governance.
“Surmounting these traps will not be possible without strengthening institutional and governance capabilities. That is why the founding of this School of Government and Development is a critical and strategic milestone,” he affirmed.
The senior United Nations official asserted that the region must undertake profound transformations to overcome its development crisis, and he noted that ECLAC proposes 11 major transformations considered to be vital for moving towards more productive, inclusive and sustainable development.
“Managing these transformations involves not only the technical aspects of policies, but also capacities for guiding and coordinating collective action,” he stated.
José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs stressed that ECLAC has put emphasis on the question of how to manage these transformations. This entails delving deeper into issues of governance; technical, operational, political and prospective (TOPP) capabilities; spaces for social dialogue; and the political economy of the transformations.
“Development is not a destination, but rather something we have to work towards, reflect upon and rethink the strategies for. We at ECLAC are working on this analytical, political, committed and impassioned dialogue for Latin America and the Caribbean. I celebrate the fact that we have a partner like the BNDES for carrying out these discussions,” he concluded.
Finally, minister Esther Dweck emphasized that economic growth is one of the important challenges for achieving structural change both in Brazil as well as in the rest of the region’s countries – but it is not enough.
“We must also tackle the persistence of poverty and inequality, structural rigidity, climate change, the uncertainty of the international context, the threat of a democratic rupture, and the pressure to reduce the state,” she stated.
Participating in the first edition of the Maria da Conceição Tavares School of Government and Development are 66 students who were selected from a pool of nearly 700 applicants. The group is made up of participants from 11 countries: 35 are from Brazil, and 31 are from other Latin American countries. There are 38 women and 28 men, with representation of Afro-descendants, indigenous persons and people of diverse identities.
The School will unfold in three stages over the course of the year. The first stage, inaugurated today, consists of five days of in-person activities at the BNDES headquarters in Rio de Janeiro. The second stage, delivered online, will run for 11 weeks – from June to August – with live sessions. The final stage will take place in September, with two days of in-person activities at ECLAC’s headquarters in Santiago, Chile.
The activities – including keynote lectures, conferences, online theoretical classes, and practical workshops – will be structured around four thematic pillars: growth in the new era of globalization and geopolitics (virtuous external integration, regional integration, and productive sophistication and diversification); productive transformation, employment, innovation capabilities and sustainability; inequality, social mobility, decent work and social justice; and democracy, institutional strengthening, governance, and social dialogue for managing transformations.
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