FACULTAD LATINOAMERICANA DE CIENCIAS SOCIALES
Grant 03392-97/0213/01
Final Technical Report April 2000-March 2001 April-September 2001
April 2002
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
During the third year, the project has successfully carried out the final stage of the three main types of activities established in the grant conditions: networking, research organization and dissemination of outputs. In addition, training activities -successfully launched during the second year- have become a permanent fourth area of the project’s endeavors.
The Latin American Trade Network (LATN) has kept its full engagement into the research of the issues constituting the focus of the project. At the same time it has expanded and consolidated both its presence and prestige as a specialized, first-rate policy-oriented research network and its advisory role to the public sector within the region. Proof of that is not only the recognition and praise it has received from scholars, public officials and business representatives but also several indicators showing that the network’s outputs have began to reach policy making circles and to be used as inputs in the processes of trade negotiations and policy formulation. In addition, due to its greater exposure and success, LATN has also been able to enlarge the number of collaborative arrangements with international institutions (Economic Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean, Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank) to jointly carry out research and training activities.
Research objectives have been fully accomplished during the third year as most of the papers commissioned are at present under revision for their inclusion in the two forthcoming books the project will publish. In the third year, the number of published policy-focused briefing papers (SERIE Brief) increased to twelve and the number of working papers (LATN working papers) to eleven (see list below). The Third General Meeting of the Project, held in Washington D.C. in November 2000, was very fruitful in that it allowed to discuss and update ongoing research work as well as to make final adjustments to the papers with the perspective of publication. In addition to the list of studies originally foreseen and to the papers added during the second year (The Asian Crisis: Trade and Trade Policy Consequences, Latin American and Caribbean Countries’ Interests in the WTO, and Implementing the TRIPS Agreement: Options for Latin American Countries), two papers were commissioned, one addressing alternative Latin American scenarios for future regional, hemispheric and multilateral trade negotiations and the other assessing the impact of the liberalization of trade in textiles and clothing for Latin American countries.
Dissemination objectives have been also fully accomplished during the third year, completing and expanding the project-related activities undertaken since April 1998. The third and the forth issues of the network’s newsletter, LATNnexos, were published. LATNnexos as well as the edited briefing and working papers continued to be distributed both throughout the region and in North America and Europe by different means (postal, electronic mail, etc.). In this sense, some issues of LATN Serie Brief and LATN Working Papers ran out of stock, showing the interest generated by the network’s research outputs as well as the success of the task of circulating and disseminating them. The website remains as key vehicle for the dissemination of the activities and products of LATN, and it has been redesigned in order to improve the organization of increasing information and make the site a very user-friendly instrument. In addition, as part of LATN’s dissemination activities and in order to enhance the network’s standing throughout the region, the coordination unit organized several very focused meetings on trade issues in different countries.
Finally, a second training course carried out in Peru in October 2000, involving researchers, policy-makers, negotiators and private sector representatives from the Andean countries. A third course to be held in Costa Rica during the winter 2002, addressing a similar audience from all Central American countries.
PROJECT ACTIVITIES AND ACHIEVEMENTS DURING THE THIRD YEAR
As in previous years, project activities were developed following the Memorandum of Grant Conditions and met the deadlines set in the original proposal submitted to the International Development Research Center (IDRC). Objectives at the end of the third year have been fulfilled, and new criteria and lines of action are in the process of being defined to strengthen the network. Following is a detailed account of the tasks carried out in order to reach the objectives, as well as the results obtained during the period under consideration. Organization and Management of the Research Network
Having made substantial progress during the second year concerning the goals of consolidating the cohesion and identity of the network and increasing its standing as a policy-oriented research endeavor throughout the region, efforts during the third year were mainly directed towards:
• Consolidating the standing of LATN as point of reference in trade matters for the academic community, policy makers and business representatives; • Expanding the network’s reach throughout the region and strengthening its links with the public sector; • Reinforcing its links with international organizations;
Regarding the first two objectives, the coordination unit devoted a lot of attention and efforts to carry out a series of activities aimed at enhancing the involvement and role of LATN both as a forum of trade policy in Latin America and a facilitator of dialogue among stakeholders in the field, mainly public officials and business sectors. These activities include, in chronological order, the organization of: i) A small group meeting in Mexico City in mid-June, with the co-sponsorship of the Centro de Investigaciones y Docencia Económica (CIDE), under the format of a workshop focusing on “Recent Trends in Latin American Trade Policy”. In addition to LATN’s members (Miguel Lengyel, Cintia Quiliconi, Antonio Ortiz Mena and Alan Fairlie), scholars from CARI (Argentina), the Inter-American Development Bank (BID), the Economic Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean (ECLAC) from Chile, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the Colegio de México attended the meeting. This meeting meant the continuation of similar activities carried out during the first two years of the project (cluster meetings in San José de Costa Rica (Costa Rica) on agriculture and in Lima (Peru) on trade in services) which proved to be highly effective to build links with policy circles and enable LATN to make a foothold in different countries of the region. ii) An informal meeting with WTO General Director, Mike Moore, in order to discuss the possibilities of a new round of negotiations in the WTO. This small meeting included among its attendants Javier Tizado, Argentina’s Secretary of Trade, Mining and Industry; LATN’s Director Diana Tussie; Enrique Mantilla, President of the Argentine Chamber of Exporters (CERA) and Felipe de la Balze from the Argentine Council on Foreign Relations (CARI), among others. iii) Two international workshops, one in Lima and the other in Bogotá, under the aegis of the Pontificia Universidad Católica from Perú and Fedesarrollo from Colombia, on the policy implications of FTAA negotiations for Andean countries. These events were carried out in March and April 2001, respectively, and each gathered about forty attendants, including scholars, officials from both those countries’ administrations and the Andean Community of Nations and representatives of the business community. Among the attendants it is worth remarking the cases of Alfredo Ferrero Diez-Canseco (Vice-Minister of Integration and International Trade Negotiations, Peru), Victor Rico Fontaura (General Director of the Secretariat of the Andean Community of Nations) and Sebastián Alegrett Ruiz (General Secretary of the Andean Community of Nations). iv) One-on-one meetings with policy makers and private sector representatives, as it had been fruitfully done during the first two years of the project. These include negotiators and public officials from many of the countries to which LATN has extended its coverage. The coordination unit as well as several of the network’s members were involved. Among others, these meetings included officials from the Argentine Secretary of Trade and Industry, Enrique Carrier (Foreign Trade Area, Stock Market of Buenos Aires), Arnaldo Chibbaro (Instituto Interamericano de Cooperación para la Agricultura, IICA/Uruguay), Jaime Campos (Fundación Invertir, Buenos Aires), Roberto Camacho (Andean Community of Nations, CAN), Silvia Hooker Ortega (Ministry of Industry, Tourism, Integration and International Trade Negotiations, Peru), Christy Garcia-Godos N. (National Institute for Defense of Competition and Intellectual Property, INDECOPI/Peru), Jorge Irribarra Espinoza (Agricultural Unit, Chilean Embassy in Buenos Aires), Roberto Matus (Chilean Embassy in Washington), Doris Osterlof O. (Export Chamber of Costa Rica), Gustavo Martin Prada (General Direction of Trade, European Commission), Lynda Watson (Minister of Canadian Embassy in Washington), and representatives of the National Confederation of Industries from Brazil. v) The permanent updating and expansion of the list of Latin American public officials that receives on a regular basis LATN’s research outputs and the incorporation to such list of representatives of the business sectors linked to international trade activities. By March 2001, such a list included about three hundred persons from virtually all Latin American countries.
All these activities paid off to a large extent. Indeed, several indicators show that LATN has had some significant success in reaching policy making circles. In addition to the noticeable participation of public officials in all events sponsored by LATN, it must be also mentioned that: first, the network’s website recorded during the period under consideration a daily average of 80 hits, which came mostly from Latin American countries, Geneva and Washington; second, requests to the coordination unit for both LATN working papers and briefing papers amounted to about two hundreds during the period under consideration, half of which came from negotiators and public officers, mostly from Latin America. Third, several LATN’s members have been involved in advisory tasks to negotiators and policy makers in Argentina, Peru, Brazil, Costa Rica and Colombia. Finally, the coordination unit has been recently approached by the Andean Community of Nation (CAN) to explore the possibility that LATN provides technical support to that trading bloc on trade negotiation issues at the multilateral and hemispheric levels.
It is important to point out, however, that these results constitute just a promissory starting point. Further efforts need to be made in order to systematize and increase the impact of LATN into policy circles, both public and private, as well as to monitor and asses such an impact. In this regard, the coordination unit undertook during the second half of the third year the task of defining several actions to be taken in the second phase of the network activities (for a detailed account of these tasks see the proposal opportunely submitted to IDRC).
With regards to the goal of strengthening links with international organizations, some of the efforts already started in the previous years crystallized during the third year. In this regard, an agreement was struck with the Integration, Trade and Hemispheric Issues Division of the Inter American Development Bank (IADB) by which this organization will support a line of inquiry into labor standards (a detailed account of activities can be found in the proposal submitted to IDRC for the second phase of the project). The Bank’s contribution will amount to US$ 150,000 and will cover the full cost (research work, salary support for the coordination unit, meeting expenditures, etc.) of this activity. Conversations with the same Division are being held to jointly organize a meeting with policy makers and negotiators in Ecuador in September 2002, opportunity in which the Third FTAA Trade Ministerial Meeting will take place.
During the year 2000, the World Bank contributed to the organization of two training courses, one in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the other in Lima, Peru, on different issues of the Latin American countries’ multilateral trade agenda (see details below). At the time of writing this report, conversations are being carried out with the World Bank to deepen the ongoing collaboration concerning these activities. LATN’s goal in this sense has been that, unlike to what happened with the first two courses, the Bank’s contribution covers the full cost of such endeavor.
During the third year of the project, LATN also made efforts to deepen links with the MERCOSUR Network and the emerging Central American Network, with the aim of optimizing the use of the human, financial and organizational resources on which the networks rely and generate synergies among them so that to enhance their individual standing. A first initiative was agreed on with the Central American Network by which LATN supported with funds the organization of a training course for Central American negotiators in February 2002 (see details below). Similarly, conversations were started to get the participation of such a network in the definition of the research activities LATN will carry out in its second phase. In the same line, conversations were also initiated with the MERCOSUR Network concerning the joint organization of meetings to present the work being done and disseminate the findings of the projects, pooling resources and organizational capacities as well as the participation of some members of that network in the process of defining LATN’s new research topics.
During the third year of the project, the coordination unit started to build bridges with the Net America, sponsored by the Organization of American States (OAS). The Project Deputy Director attended in September 2000 the first organizational meeting of such a network, where an agenda of activities for the year 2001 and 2002 was tentatively defined. The coordination unit’s has approached this link with the special concern of not diluting LATN’s own identity and standing, given the overlapping between some of both networks’ goals and planned activities.
Finally, the coordination unit approached towards the beginning of the year 2001 the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) with the aim of finding new possibilities to fund research on topics that emerge during the second phase of LATN activities. At the time of writing this report, conversations are still underway.
In light of all the former, it is fair to say that by the end of the third year the network has made considerable progress concerning both its internal cohesion and working and its standing as a quite specialized policy-oriented body of first-rate scholars through many areas of Latin America. It has also made substantial inroads in the task of building mutually beneficial links with the region’s policy community and other international organization sharing similar concerns. However, as said before, the challenge ahead is not minor: LATN’s presence needs to be strengthened or further extended to some countries of the region, relationships with policy-makers needs to be systematized and the network’s impact on the policy decision-making process needs to be invigorated.
Preparation of Research Studies
During the third year of the project the coordination unit undertook several actions to successfully conclude the ongoing research work. As in the former two years, it continued to stress the need to ensure both the timing and quality of LATN’s research output. This meant in practice the coordination unit’s constant monitoring of the work in process and regular exchange of information with the researchers involved. Emphasis was also placed on getting that research output added genuine value to the work being done on similar topics within the region and elsewhere and was permanently updated up to the time of their final delivery of the studies. This implied in some cases important reorganizations of the papers or “last-minute” incorporations of new data in order to take into consideration emerging events in the trade field. Efforts in this regard were crowned with success as the final versions of virtually all research papers were ready by March 2001. In this way, the coordination unit was able in time to start the not less demanding task of turning such research products into a two-volume book (see Dissemination below). The chart that follows summarizes the state of research work by the end of the third year.
Issues Stage of Development Block 1: Global Integration New Trade Coalitions Final draft Updating trade negotiations in the Final draft hemisphere Trade, Regionalism and the Threat to Final draft Multilateralism * Latin American Countries and the WTO * Final draft The Asian Crisis and Trade * Final draft Alternative scenarios of trade negotiations 2nd draft Block 2: Issues in the new trade agenda Agriculture (2 papers) Multilateral framework Final draft Regional Agreements 2nd draft Subsidies and export promotion policies * Final draft Trade relief * Final draft Environment and trade 2nd draft Competition policy * Final draft Dispute Settlement * Final draft Special and differential treatment 3rd draft The international investment regime * Final draft The link with macroeconomic policies Final draft Markets and labor standards Preliminary 1st draft Gender and trade 2nd draft TRIPS 3rd draft Textile WTO regulation and its 1st draft consequences for Latin America Services (3 papers) General Framework Final draft Telecommunications Final draft Financial Services Final draft Block 3: Country case studies Argentina * Final draft Brazil * Final draft Colombia and Venezuela* Final Draft México Final draft Chile Final draft Uruguay Final draft Peru 3rd draft * Published as LATN Working Paper
It is important to mention that, as the chart shows, in addition to the papers commissioned during the first two years of the project, two new papers were commissioned during the period under consideration in order to address newly- emerging relevant questions. One of them, by Pedro da Motta Veiga, discusses alternative scenarios of Latin American countries’ trade negotiations and a short version of it has been featured in the forth issue of LATNexos. The other, by María Inés Terra (Universidad de la República, Uruguay), ponders the consequences of the WTO agreement on textiles for Latin America countries by employing a G-TAP econometric model to measure the impact of the new rules upon commercial liberalization. Therefore, a total amount of thirty papers (instead of the twenty-two originally planed) was the research output by the time of concluding the project’s life. In this sense it has to be mentioned that the paper on government procurement, commissioned during the second year of the project, had to be left aside due to time constraints that made impossible for the author to meet the planned schedule.
In addition to the constant and fluid exchange of ideas and suggestions between the coordination unit and the authors involved in the task of preparing research work, the Project Third General Meeting held at Washington DC in November 2000, was a very useful instance to that end. All the ongoing research work was presented and discussed there and valuable suggestions and insights were obtained. This allowed the coordination unit and researchers involved to devote themselves in the following months to the task of incorporating those comments and suggestions and, thus, to move the work in process toward its final version stage. The meeting was also crucial to fine-tune research objectives, as it posed the need that LATN addressed the issues for which the two new papers mentioned above were commissioned.
Preparation of research work went beyond working papers. During the third year of the project, five briefing papers on foreign direct investments and trade, liberalization of trade in services, dispute settlement in the hemisphere, telecommunications in Latin America and trade relief measures were also prepared and published. As mentioned in the previous technical reports, this task is particularly demanding for the coordination unit as it has to carry out the downsizing of the working papers into a brief format, their edition and their publication. Yet, as the previous experience taught, this effort is worth doing because the briefing papers got a significant acceptance from the targeted audience and proved to be a very effective vehicle to reach both public officials and representatives of the private sector. In addition to the published briefing papers, the coordination’s unit production during the third year included the elaboration of a brief offering a comparison and preliminary assessment of the results of the country case- studies research bloc, a brief by Diana Tussie on FTAA negotiations, a brief on Doha work program, and a brief by Cintia Quiliconi on the implication of the trade promotion authority for hemispheric and multilateral negotiations. The last three briefing papers were disseminated through LATN’s webpages. One of LATN’s researchers, Alan Fairlie, also contributed with a briefing paper on open regionalism and negotiations in the Andean Community of Nations that was also place in the network’s website.
The project has also been successful finding additional sources of support for the research work during the third year. As previously noted, co-financing from the IADB to address the issue of trade and labor standards through the elaboration of 6 papers and the organization of 5 workshops was agreed. In addition, an agreement was worked out with ECLAC which allowed the incorporation of the papers on Uruguay and Chile in the book to be published. The following chart presents an update and complete picture regarding co-financing, specifying funds obtained during the project’ life span:
Issue Co-financing institution Contribution Argentine case-study UNCTAD/ECLAC $ 10,000 Brazilian case-study UNCTAD/ECLAC $ 10,000 Chilean case-study UNCTAD/ECLAC $ 10,000 Uruguayan case-study UNCTAD/ECLAC $ 10,000 New trade coalitions University of Oxford In kind Subsidies and export IADB/Intal $ 1,000 promotion Trade and environment MacArthur Foundation $ 9,000 Competition Policy OAS/IPEA In kind Trade in Services ECLAC In kind Agriculture SELA $ 700 SAGPyA (Argentina) $ 3,000* Dispute Settlement Sec. of Strategic Planning Internship (V. Delich) (Argentina) Updating trade negotiations ALADI In kind Telecommunications World Bank 7,500 Financial Services World Bank 7,500 TRIPS World Bank 7,500 Labor standards IADB 150,000 * These funds helped to support Marisa Díaz-Henderson research work on the issue.
In terms of substantial results, research carried out during the project brought about various insights that became apparent when the papers were reaching its final stages. Among the most important it is worth remarking:
Latin American countries got into the UR negotiations without being endowed with a careful assessment of the economic implications and institutional requirements of the concessions they were given and commitments they were taken; in this sense, this problem was particularly acute on issues going beyond the traditional field of tariff negotiations;
In a similar vein, Latin American countries got into those negotiations without having adequately pondered the costs and benefits of making commitments at the multilateral, hemispheric or regional levels. It was not clear even from the beginning of the UR that the multilateral forum was more convenient than the others to negotiate on particular issues, even if commitments made at that level served to anchor the domestic trade reforms most of those countries were pursuing;
In most issues, although Latin American countries were able to articulate and frame their general trade interests (i.e., to bring agriculture in), they exhibited very limited capacity to devise operative mechanisms and dispositions to be included in the agreements in order to further those interests as well as to deal with the technicalities of the others’. Examples of this are the so-called “dirty tariffication” in the agreement on agriculture and the scarce use by Latin American countries of the special and differential treatment clauses.
Related to the former point, one of the key lessons to be drawn from the experience of dealing with the new multilateral rules and disciplines is that market opportunities do not necessarily translate into effective market access. Agriculture and textiles, sectors of particular relevance for many Latin American countries, are two cases in point.
In terms of the results of the UR, Latin American countries have faced implementation problems both because of the nature of some commitments –that in some cases generated a tension between the WTO resulting policy prescriptions and the domestic political support for those measures- and the magnitude of the institutional adjustment required at the domestic level. LATN papers on TRIPs, TRIMs and trade relief measures and all of the case-studies tellingly reflect those implementation problems. Dissemination of Project Activities and Results
The dissemination of the project activities and results continued to rely during the third year on the same means and actions employed in the previous periods, as they proved quite effective to that goal. Notwithstanding, the coordination unit started by the beginning of the year 2001 to discuss some changes in the network’s dissemination policy in order to further enhance its effectiveness. A summary of the actions carried out includes:
1. The release of the third and fourth issues of the network’s newsletter, LATNexos, in September 2000 and January 2001, respectively, continuing with the practice implemented during the second year of including substantial contents in the newsletter in addition to the information on LATN regular activities and outputs. As a result, the third issue included two short contributions from network members addressing the need to rethink the World Trade Organization and Latin America and the dispute settlement mechanism in the WTO while the latter features a short version on the paper on alternative scenarios of trade negotiations. As the previous editions, these two issues were made available at the network’s website.
2. The expansion and redesign of the website in Spanish and English in order to enrich the information it provides and make it more user-friendly, thus enhancing its pivotal role as a tool for the dissemination of LATN activities and results. Aside from basic information such as the project’s objectives, membership, activities and agenda, the site provides access to the briefing papers and to abstracts of the working papers whose full version can be requested on line and to LATNexos. The updating of the webpages was carried out on a monthly basis and links with new institutions were added to those previously established. As mentioned before (see Organization and Management of the Research Network), LATN’s website became during the third year of the project a point of increasing consultation for scholars, government officials and business representatives from the region and elsewhere interested in Latin American trade matters.
3. The expansion of the list of people to which LATN’s published research outputs (working papers, briefing papers and newsletter) are made available trough mail. As already note, this list reached by the beginning of the year 2001 about three hundred people, including scholars, policy makers, negotiators and business representatives. In this task, the coordination unit placed special emphasis on reaching key persons because of their incumbency or stakes in the issues on whose analysis the network is concerned.
4. The organization of the already mentioned Third General Meeting of the project and cluster meetings in Mexico, Peru and Colombia (see Organization and Management of the Network). Although these meetings had specific goals concerning the network’s ongoing research work (presentation of progress reached, discussion of topics being addressed), they also sought to enhance its exposure and interaction with policy-making circles. The general meeting, organized in plenary sessions and thematic workshops, brought together about 60 people, including IDRC representatives, OAS, UNCTAD, ALADI, ECLAC and WTO officials, World Bank and IADB representatives, officials from the Canadian Embassy and the Argentinean Ambassador in the United States. The cluster meetings, in turn, gathered nearly 80 people, including negotiators, policy-makers and business representatives of the countries of subregions involved (see Organization and Management of the Network).
5. The analysis of changes in the network’s dissemination activities in order to optimize the use of resources and improve the communication and reach of the network with policy makers and negotiators. A decision reached in this sense was to discontinue the printed version of the newsletter while keeping its presentation through electronic means. In a similar vein, the working papers will be placed in LATN website (as it was done with the briefing papers) and only a few will be printed. Finally, the coordination unit started to discuss new ways to get a greater involvement of authors and/or participating institutions in the local dissemination of findings as well as a more systematic interaction and exchange of LATN’s members with relevant public officers.
Training Activities
During the third year, two training courses were successfully organized in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Lima, Peru, under the common heading of “Negotiations in the WTO: Theoretical and Practical Tools for the Design of Strategies”. The Buenos Aires course was carried out in April, 2000 and included the following topics and instructors: • Dynamics and perspectives of WTO negotiations, Celso Lafer; • Multilateral rules and their implications for Latin American countries, Bernard Hoekman and Diana Tussie; • Agricultural negotiations and the SPS and TBT challenges, Hector Torres; • Simulation exercise on agricultural negotiations, UNCTAD’s Program on Trade Diplomacy headed by Manuela Tórtora; • Negotiations on services: the cases of telecommunications and financial services, Francisco Prieto; and • Evaluation of the TRIPS and TRIMS agreements and the upcoming negotiations, Carlos Correa.
In turn, the course in Lima, carried out in October, 2000, included the following topics and instructors: • Dynamics and perspective of the WTO, Michael Finger and Alan Fairlie; • Negotiations on subsidies, anti-dumping and countervailing duties, Michael Finger and Miguel Lengyel, • Agricultural negotiations and the SPS and TBT challenges, Hector Torres; • Negotiations on services, Sherry Stephenson; • Negotiations on TRIMS and TRIPS, Carlos Correa.
Both courses were organized in units and participants were able to register for the entire course or individual units. Special care was taken to hold the course wholly in Spanish in order to fulfil the goal of particularly targeting a Latin American audience.
The initiative counted with the co-sponsoring of the World Bank Institute while the Program of Trade Diplomacy of the UNCTAD contributed with instructors for the Buenos Aires course. This partnership proved to be not only a very successful marketing strategy due to the good reputation of the institution involved; but, more importantly, a means to guarantee that the course integrated different approaches to the topics. As a result of the success of the courses, it was agreed to develop this partnership with a long-term view. As mentioned before, conversations are being hold at the moment of writing this report in order to get the Bank’s commitment to fund the full costs of this activity.
Several positive points can be mentioned in respect of the courses. First, the selection of instructors was a real asset. They were able to successfully articulate a general overview of the topics with an in-depth and detailed discussion of technicalities. Further, the instructors also properly mixed theoretical and practical training. The module by UNCTAD –a simulation exercise on agricultural negotiations- also had a great impact as attendants were absorbed in the exercise and took it very seriously. Second, the attendance of people from other Latin American countries was very satisfactory, indicating the reach of LATN in the region. This fact induced both participants and instructors not to exclusively focus on the host country's problematic. Third, because of the different backgrounds of participants (public and private sector, scholars and negotiators) a multidisciplinary flavor was brought into the discussion of the topics. Finally, because of the last two reasons, the courses was highly functional to LATN’s objectives in terms of impact into the private and public sector.
A third training event promoted by LATN was the course took carried out in Guatemala in February 2002, named “FTAA and OMC: Implications and Challenges for the Small Economies of the Hemisphere”. In this case, the organizing institution was ASIES and LATN co-sponsored the course with the World Bank, the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Ford Foundation. The content and instructors of the course were as follows: • Current situation of FTAA negotiations and the launching of a new WTO round; • Key topics for small economies: agriculture, trade in services, intellectual property and investments; • Assessment of the negotiating capacity of hemispheric small countries and recommendations to improve it; • Instructors: Patricio Contreras, Jaime Granados, Michael Finger, César Parga, Carlos Murillo and Maryse Robert.
This course was as successful as the former two in terms of the suitability of contents, organization and the number and background of attendants. Indeed, 36 people participated, many of them negotiators and policy makers from the Central American countries.
At present, the coordination unit is keeping conversations with the National Confederation of Industries (CNI) from Brazil to organize a course on similar topics in that country during the year 2002.
The Project Advisory Committee
As it happened in previous stages of the project, involvement of the Project Advisory Committee (PAC) was far from satisfactory during the third year. Difficulties showed up at the time of organizing Committee Meetings due to the busy agenda and time constraints to which Committee members are subject. Furthermore, Committee members involvement during the third year was uneven. In this sense, it is worth highlighting the support given by Robert Devlin from the IADB for the organization of the network’s Third Plenary Meeting by facilitating the Bank’s headquarters at Washington D.C. and providing logistic help. He also played a key role for the success of negotiations carried out to obtain funds from the Bank for conducting research on the topic of labor standards and trade (see Organization and Management of the Network). Devlin and Patrick Low (WTO) were, in turn, the most active members of the PAC in providing overall guidance, strategic direction and advice on the content of research work.
In face of this situation and the meager success of efforts and initiatives to reverse it, consideration was begun to be given by the end of year 2000 to the possibility of setting up a steering committee to support the coordination unit’s task of managing the research network. The underlying criteria was to generate a small group of very active LATN members that get engage on a regular basis in the operations of the network by contributing to provide orientation for studies, generate insights about its working, nominate and consult to incorporate new members, explore options for parallel funding and so on. The idea was finally formally posed in the proposal submitted to IDRC for the second phase of the network.
PROJECT’S ADMINISTRATIVE ASPECTS
Staffing of the project
The project staff suffered no changes during the third year. The main reason behind this was the adequate and efficient functioning of the current staff in the fulfillment of its duties. This clearly shows the accuracy of previous incorporations decided by the Project Director at the beginning of the second year (see Second Technical Report). More specifically, the adequate working of the existing staff was maintained even under exceptional circumstances, as it was the reduction of the Project Director’s dedication by half due to her appointment first as advisor to the Secretary of Trade and later on as Undersecretary of Trade Policy. At that moment, the staff could manage the increasing workload without undermining its performance.
Institutional Aspects
During the third year, no major organizational changes took place at FLACSO/ Argentina.
Project Related International Travel and Meetings
LATN continued to have very busy agenda in terms of its participation in academic and policy-making activities and meetings during the third year of the project. The following are the ones LATN members attended in that period:
2000 • May 9-10, Campinas, Brazil. “Campinas Regional Forum”, organized by Mercosur Network, OAS, FAPESP, UNICAMP. Participant: Diana Tussie. • May 24-26, Montevideo, Uruguay. Workshop on “Multilateral Trade Negotiations”, organized by CE, SELA, and ALADI. Participant: Diana Tussie. • June 1-2, Caracas, Venezuela. Workshop on “Policies Integration and Simulation Exercise on Agricultural Negotiations”, organized by LATN, UNCTAD and the Government of Venezuela. Participant: Manuela Tórtora and Marisa Díaz- Henderson. • June 15-16, Mexico D.F., Mexico. Seminar “Recent Trends in Latin American Trade Policy. Case Analysis”, organized by LATN and CIDE. Participants: Alan Fairlie, Miguel Lengyel, Antonio Ortiz Mena L.N., Cintia Quiliconi, Verónica Silva, Manuela Tórtora. • July 14-15, Brussels, Belgium. Conference “The Post-Seattle World Trade System: Institutional Design and Governance”, organized by CEPR, ECARES, the World Bank and Université Libre de Bruxelles. Participant: Diana Tussie. • September 18 and 19, Washington D.C., U.S.A. “Conference on Export Promotion. Challenges and opportunities for Latin America and the Caribbean”, organized by IADB and INTAL. Participant: Miguel Lengyel. • November 8-9, Washington D.C., U.S.A. LATN Third General Meeting. Participants: all the network’s members.
2001 • March 5, Lima, Peru and March 15, Bogotá, Colombia, “Workshop on FTAA Negotiations and their Implications for the Andean Countries”, organized by LATN. Participants: Alan Fairlie, Luis Abuggatás and Juan José Echavarría. • April, Washington D.C., First Meeting of the Net America, organized by the Trade Unit of the OAS. Participant: Miguel Lengyel, Juan José Echavarría, José Tavares, Antonio Ortiz-Mena.
TRANSITION PERIOD: APRIL-SEPTEMBER 2001
By the beginning of year 2001, conversations between the Project Director and IDRC to carry out a second phase of the project were underway, posing tentatively the month of October 2001 to initiate that phase. The coordination unit then submitted to IDRC a plan of activities to be undertaken during the transition period between the first and second stages of the project, which was opportunely approved. Expenditures in that period were to be funded with savings obtained by the coordination unit during the first phase (see Financial Reports). In line with that plan, the activities carried out during such a period were as follows:
Administration and Management of the Network
The coordination unit continued to administer and manage the research network during the period April-September 2001. In addition to the daily activities required to keep LATN working at full steam (administration of resources, internal and external communication, dissemination of outputs, etc.) the coordination unit took advantage of that time to give final shape to several new initiatives started to be considered towards the end of the third year. These include:
• The definition of new researchers and institutions to be incorporated to LATN. This activity implied the identification of potential new members, the establishment of contacts and the definition of the nature and content of their involvement. Emphasis was placed in this sense in strengthening the standing of the network in countries of the region where its reach is weak, in particular the smallest countries (Ecuador and Central American countries). As a result of this activity, the Asociación de Investigación y Estudios Sociales (ASIES) from Guatemala, the Instituto Iberoamericano de Cooperación Agrícola (IICA) from Costa Rica, the Universidad de la República from Uruguay, the Universidad Andina Simón Bolivar from Ecuador, the Colegio de Mexico and CEBRI from Brazil were successfully targeted to be included in the second phase of the network’s research program (see proposal submitted to IDRC).
• The constitution of the steering committee. It was defined that this organ would consist of five persons to be selected among the most active LATN’s members during the first phase of the project. After various rounds of consultation with potential candidates, it was agreed that Alan Fairlie (Pontific Universidad Católica, Perú), Pedro da Motta Veiga (FUNCEX, Brazil), José Manuel Villasuso (Universidad de Costa Rica), Vivianne Ventura (ECLAC, Chile) and Antonio Ortiz Mena (CIDE, Mexico) would integrate the committee.
• The identification of new mechanisms to be implemented in the second phase in order to monitor the impact of LATN’s outputs on policy-makers and negotiators. Concretely, it was defined that a composite index would be developed including indicators on: - The knowledge about LATN’s products that policy-makers and negotiators in a specific policy area (agriculture, services, etc.) have; - The extent to which those officers use the network’s research outputs as inputs for their work; - The extent to which they request for LATN’s advice or support; - When feasible, incremental changes in the content of trade policies and negotiation strategies, reflecting LATN’s research work.
The rationale behind this index is that these indicators will provide a yardstick to monitor the success of the network in influencing policy or, otherwise, to introduce correctives in its actions to disseminate outputs and to reach its main audience.
Preparation of research proposal
During the transition period, the coordination prepared the project proposal for the second phase of LATN, which was submitted to IDRC on November 2001. This entailed a process in which several drafts were elaborated following very useful comments and suggestions made by IDRC’s Regional Office at Montevideo, Uruguay. In this regard, particular relevant was the contribution of Andrés Rius. This process of formulation was opened to LATN’s members, many of whom submitted proposals for specific topics to be addressed. A central goal in this endeavor was to enhance the policy relevance of future research, for which a novel way of defining the specific content of studies in some topics was devised. To put it shortly, it was agreed that such content would be defined through a process directly involving public sector officials that sit at the negotiation table. The means for such engagement would be the organization of teleconferences with relevant officials and business representatives. The project was approved by IDRC in December 2001 and the following month the second phase of LATN activities formally started.
Preparation of books
This was the most demanding and time-consuming task the coordination unit carried out during the transition period. It entailed, first, the elaboration of book proposals for submission to four different publishers with the fulfillment of all the paper work required. Such proposals were submitted to Routledge, Ashgate, Palgrave/MacMillan and Lynne Rinner. The process was crowned with success as the prestigious Palgrave/MacMillan accepted to publish the two volumes, one edited by Diana Tussie including LATN’s issue studies and the other edited by Miguel Lengyel and Vivianne Ventura including the country case studies. It also entailed the revision of the papers to be included, a extremely hard work as it required in virtually all cases the re-writing of some sections of the studies, the incorporations of changes in their structure, the updating of data and a meticulous editing and stylizing work. Some of the authors were involved in the process which was, so far, also successful. Indeed, Palgrave/Macmillan approved the manuscripts for the issue volume, after careful revision by an external and anonymous reader. The manuscripts for the country case studies book will be submitted during the upcoming month of May. The volumes are scheduled to be on the shelves by the end of this year.