CAF -development bank of Latin America-, the Spanish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, and the Spanish Confederation of Business Organizations (CEOE) brought together a group of specialists and leaders from the public and private sectors at Casa América in Madrid to explore new ways to strengthen relations between Spain and Latin Americaespecially with regard to sustainability, digitization, social inclusion and promotion of the Spanish language.
During the conference, which coincides with the 20th anniversary of Spain’s accession to CAFThe long-term effects of the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, Latin America’s leadership in combating climate change and the need to work together to reactivate economies and find solutions to the great global challenges of the coming decades were also analyzed. .
After the welcome from Enrique Ojeda, General Director of Casa América, Sergio Díaz-Granados, Executive President of CAF, recalled how the lives of millions of people have been improved thanks to the investments made by the institution, and the approval of a capital increase of 7,000 million dollars, which will double the size of the bank until 2030.
Díaz-Granados proposed strengthening the relations of European countries with Latin America and expressed hope for the future presidency of Spain in the EU in the second half of 2023 and by the possibility of holding a new summit of European and Latin American finance ministers. He also spoke about the importance of digital, ecological and Spanish transformation, topics covered in the different panels. Regarding climate change, he stated that “any solution to the climate crisis passes through Latin America.”
For his part, Gonzalo García Andrés, Secretary of State for the Economy and Business Support, defended public-private cooperation and indicated that, although we are experiencing a high level of uncertainty in the economic sphere, such as supply problems , rises in energy and food prices, rise in interest rates, rise in inflation, “You have to have confidence, because we have the institutions and the tools to go out and continue growing.”
The conference began with a discussion on the current context of the bi-regional relationship and the need to strengthen alliances to make cooperation and joint work the strategy to follow. He was moderated by Pepa Bueno, director of El País, and Andrés Allamand, Ibero-American secretary general, SEGIB; Julissa Reynoso, US ambassador to Spain; and José Juan Ruiz, president of the Elcano Royal Institute.
The conference had two panels and a closing dialogue in which Enrique García, former executive president of CAF, and Enrique Iglesias, former president of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), participated. The first panel dealt with the relevance of Latin America and the Caribbean in environmental issues and the need to count on the region to achieve the objectives set for 2030. It was moderated by the journalist Michael Reid, from The Economist, and the participation of Adriana Mira , Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of El Salvador; Gabriela Ramos, General Director of Social and Human Sciences of UNESCO; Ángeles Santamaría, CEO of Iberdrola Spain; Adriana Mejía, ambassador and permanent representative of Colombia to the OECD; and Alicia Montalvo, Manager of Climate Action and Positive Biodiversity at CAF.
the second panel, on the value of Spanish and the positioning of Latin America, it was moderated by Michael Stott, editor for Latin America of the Final Times, and intervened by Juan Fernández Trigo, Secretary of State for Ibero-America and the Caribbean and Spanish in the World from Spain; Dan Restrepo, former director for Western Hemisphere Affairs of the National Security Council of the United States; Cristina Gallach, special commissioner for the Alliance for the New Economy of Language; Concepción Andreu, president of the Autonomous Community of La Rioja; and Richard Benjamins, Chief AI & Data Strategist at Telefónica.
The event was closed by Antonio Garamendi, president of the Spanish Confederation of Business Organizations (CEOE), who highlighted that “the digital and ecological transitions become key vectors on which investments must pivot”and by Christian Asinelli, CAF’s Corporate Vice President of Strategic Programming, who said “We have ahead of us to work to give the region more relevance, to be architects of caring for our common home, but to do so with a human face.”
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