Mesas Ejecutivas a New Tool for Productive Diversification
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MESAS EJECUTIVAS A NEW TOOL FOR PRODUCTIVE DIVERSIFICATION MESAS EJECUTIVAS A NEW TOOL FOR PRODUCTIVE DIVERSIFICATION MESAS EJECUTIVAS: A NEW TOOL FOR PRODUCTIVE DIVERSIFICATION Ministerio de la Producción del Perú All rights reserved in Peru ©Ministerio de la Producción Calle Uno Oeste N.° 60, Urb. Corpac – San Isidro Lima – Perú The contents of this publication may be reproduced in full or partially provided due credit is given to Ministry of Production and other sources of information, and for any other quotations or references herein. Copy editing Jorge Cornejo Calle Diagramming and layout Natalia Hidalgo Vélez Cover photos Banco de Imágenes del Ministerio de la Producción y de la Presidencia de la República Printed in Peru July 2016 First edition Printing TAREA ASOCIACIÓN GRÁFICA EDUCATIVA Pasaje María Auxiliadora 156 – Breña Telephone: (01) 332-3229 / 424-8104 Email: [email protected] Web: www.tareagrafica.com July 2016, Lima – Perú 500 copies Publication catalog registry number. National Library of Peru N.° 2016-09349 Ackowledgements At the beginning of 2015, Peru launched its Mesas Ejecutivas initiative to set up government and industry teams focused on identifying and removing bottlenecks that hampered growth across various areas of the economy. The mesas responded to obvious problems, including poor coordination among government agencies, complex coordination between government and industry, and limited State capacity to organize policies to address industry’s production issues. Two surprising developments have taken place in the year and a half since their inception. On the one hand, we confirmed much can be done in a short period of time and with scant resources. On the other, the Working Groups have elicited much interest as a productive development tool both in and outside Peru, to the extent it is suggested they could be replicated elsewhere. As in almost everything else, people are behind the success of the mesas. My heartfelt gratitude goes to the members of the various Mesas Ejecutivas from both government and industry, all the way from MEF through Serfor, Osinfor, Ositran, Sanipes and Sunafil, to private sector representatives. I am also thankful to my colleagues in the Cabinet of Ministers who accompanied the mesas all along the way, including Alonso Segura, Juan Manuel Benites, Diana Álvarez Calderón, José Gallardo, Daniel Maurate and Aníbal Velásquez, with whom we shared many responsibilities in the various Working Groups. The original concept behind the Mesas Ejecutivas was nurtured by talks with René Cornejo and Ricardo Hausmann. Meanwhile, Chuck Sabel, Ernesto Stein and Gianfranco Castagnola helped us confirm how powerful the Working Groups were as tools for developing production. Bailey Klinger collaborated in systematizing the ME´s methodology and preparing this document. Produce’s team led by Ivonne Echevarría deserves special recognition. Their efforts made it possible to transition the Working Groups from interesting concept to actual reality. The Working Groups’ internal dynamics shows cooperation between government and industry, an indispensable element of economic development, is possible. Though requiring painstaking effort, they show the cumulative effect of many measures can exceed the impact of large scale reforms and perhaps jumpstart to a true revolution. Ministerio de la Producción 8 TABLE OF CONTENTS FOREWORD................................................................................................................ 11 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 17 I. WHAT ARE THE MESAS EJECUTIVAS AND WHY ARE THEY NEEDED? .............. 21 II. SETTING UP MESAS EJECUTIVAS ........................................................................ 25 III. MANAGING MESAS EJECUTIVAS ........................................................................ 31 IV. LESSONS LEARNED AND THE FUTURE OF THE MESAS ................................. 43 CONCLUSIONS ......................................................................................................... 49 APPENDIX ................................................................................................................. 51 a. MESAS EJECUTIVAS. PROGRESS MADE ......................................................... 51 b. MESAS EJECUTIVAS. ACCOMPLISHMENTS .................................................. 69 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................ 129 INITIALS AND ACRONYMS ........................................................................................ 131 9 FOREWORD The Happy Accident of the Mesas Ejecutivas The mesas ejecutivas are a happy accident that was waiting to happen—an instance of that meeting of preparation and opportunity, which, Seneca said, defines good luck. The mesas are a general answer—not the only one, but one especially relevant to countries like Peru, and Latin America generally—to this paradox: Because the world is getting more uncertain—it is getting harder and harder to foresee where technology or markets are going—planning in the traditional sense of drawing up detailed blueprints for long- term action is a fool’s errand. But while the world is becoming more uncertain it is also becoming more complex: Firms have to coordinate with each other in supply chains, and with more and more demanding and capable regulators to ensure the safety of products, protect the environment, and provide safe and decent conditions of work. No coordination, no—or very little—economic development. So how do firms and public authorities organize the coordination that complexity makes necessary without attempting the kind of planning that uncertainty makes impossible? The mesas ingeniously simple answer is to start solving coordination problems. What kind of problems are those? Problems involving private and public actors—and usually various actors within the public sector--big enough so that solving them makes a noticeable improvement to operations in a relatively short time, but not so big as to require substantial budget allocations or long gestation periods. That span excludes, at least initially, large infrastructure projects or investments in elaborate training programs, but includes a host of substantial problems deriving from tangled legislation and administrative guidance—for instance, should trees in plantations on land that is being reforested be treated as agricultural crops, or as trees in virgin forests? Are there firms that want to address problems like that? You bet. In Peru, as in all middle-income countries, there are already many firms that compete, or want to compete, in international markets, where they will have to meet demanding private and public standards. And in Peru, as generally in Latin America, there are firms that pay taxes and respect national legislation and regulation—and face competition from firms in the informal sector that do neither. These exporters and formal-sector firms don’t like confused and contradictory rules, but neither are they interested in simple-de-regulation. They want rules, rather, that allow them to develop and demonstrate their capacities to partner companies in supply chains and to consumers. They proved to be the mesas natural private-sector constituency. Do you need to a prestigious international consultancy to study which sectors make good candidates for this kind of collaboration? The lesson of the mesas is: skip it. If no actors in 11 Ministerio de la Producción the domestic economy have thought of an initiative, they are certainly not going to have any practical sense of the coordination problems involved in realizing it; and if they have thought of it, you are better off exploring the possibilities of collaboration in informal discussions (as Produce did) rather than paying a consultant to act as a go between. In any case the good candidate sectors are often obvious: Peru has the second largest forested area in Latin America, the ninth largest in the world, but exports little and imports much of the wood it needs for construction. There are investors, domestic and foreign, eager to develop large, reforestation plantations, or to develop ecologically sustainable silviculture in the natural forests. Including forestry in the list of mesas was not a close call. But how do you know whom to invite? Again the answer is close to self-evident: Focus on the leaders of firms (because they know the obstacles to improving productivity or entering new markets first hand, and because they can convene their peers) and decorously de- emphasize leaders of trade associations (whose expertise is lobbying for traditional state favors such as subsidies, tax exemptions and trade protection). Invite technically competent people from the principal departments and ministries with jurisdiction in the sector. Can you be sure to have invited the right people? No, you should assume you haven’t, if only because you are almost sure to have overlooked small producers (who often lack organized representation) and local players (in Peru, for instance, the local authorities of mixed repute with crucial authority over certifying land title and issuing permissions to log). But, as we will see in a moment, it is easy enough to correct the inevitable mistakes once the mesas are up and running. And what about setting the agenda? Again, the answer is to take a relaxed approach: Let the group pick three or five topics, set up working