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Public
FTAA.soc/w/159
October 24, 2000


Original: Spanish
Translation: FTAA Secretariat

FTAA - COMMITTEE OF GOVERNMENT REPRESENTATIVES ON THE PARTICIPATION OF
CIVIL SOCIETY

CONTRIBUTION IN RESPONSE TO THE OPEN INVITATION


Name Enrique Antonio Vargas Bustos
Organization
(if any)
Organización Ecológica “El Día de la Mascota”
Country/
Region
Chile

Executive summary

Development of the international economic negotiations process


Overall vision-introduction to the topic

I believe it is necessary for all FTAA countries to make a major effort to achieve greater homogeneity between their individual economies, so as to be in a better position later to initiate a negotiation process with international economies. For this purpose there should be real transparency and loyalty of attitude among participants: in order to form a cohesive negotiating bloc, through qualified representatives.

The main idea should be common to all FTAA countries: to achieve a transformation of productive structures in a framework of sustainable development and social equity, with protection for the environment. Thus seeking to create incipient sources of dynamism to fulfil each country’s own development goals, sustain and improve income distribution, consolidate democratic processes, achieve conditions to halt all environmental deterioration, and improve the quality of people’s lives. This productive transformation process should project shared political guidelines for international integration, strengthening the institutional basis of FTAA integration. Competitiveness and the possibilities of increasing exports worldwide — all of this is achieved by increasing cooperation on aspects such as intellectual property, commercial openness and selective tariff binding, as a tool of negotiation guaranteeing entry to external markets, increasing the participation of the different public- and private-sector actors in decision-making processes.

1. POLICIES THAT WOULD SUPPORT THE NEGOTIATING PROCESS AND, ULTIMATELY, INTERNATIONAL LINKAGES.

1.1 Exchange rate and trade: Establish a concrete and solid exchange rate in the FTAA to permit competitiveness.

1.2 On technology: Incentives to entrepreneurs to have greater resource possibilities, in order to maximize technology and satisfy international demands, in order to achieve access to negotiations under equal conditions.

1.3 Labor training: Prioritizing activities, to disseminate them in the technical process to favor social equity and create differentiated programs through pluralistic instructions among the different groups of workers and entrepreneurs, through a general training system.

1.4 Generation of enterprises: The State should support systems that generate enterprises and entrepreneurs, empowering and financing projects, minimizing bureaucracy, paying greater attention to small and medium-sized enterprise.

2. ENCOURAGE POLICIES THAT STRENGTHEN PRODUCTIVE REGULATIONS

2.1 Agriculture: Strengthening of interrelated systematic rules between agriculture, industry and services, all supported by the corresponding training, in order to encourage progress, process and products skillfully directed in a differentiated fashion in FTAA member countries by each producer class.

2.2 Industry: Link the consciences of FTAA member countries in a neutral and transparent way, broadening criteria in all sectors, and stimulating markets.

2.3 Product Services and Infrastructure: Give special emphasis to productive restructuring in programmed changes, prioritizing expansion of telecommunications and services to producer countries, giving guidance on good quality in this field.

2.4 Raw Materials or Natural Resources: FTAA member countries should share their market methods under precise rules, in order to ensure rational exploitation of products, through networks and control of resources with regard to assigned uses.

2.5 Financing of Public-Sector Bodies: Develop funds and bank loans for financing, with the aim of programmed negotiation in the established time period for the corresponding market; such resources should be objectively channeled into public sectors, orienting lending towards medium and small-scale enterprise.

2.6 Financing of private-sector bodies: The largest investments will be achieved through domestic saving so as to create sources of saving, whether private, voluntary, public, or institutional, with support encouraged by the States of each FTAA member country.

3. IMPROVEMENT AND MAINTENANCE OF PROGRAMMED POLICIES BETWEEN THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECTORS.

3.1 Norms: These will be produced through objective public regulation, aimed at increasing support for the market, with strong public control over support received, private bodies saw them as benefits of the market to give greater transparency between FTAA members for negotiation and competitiveness.

3.2 Public Enterprise: Generate general financial health among public enterprise bodies in FTAA member countries, equalizing the wages of staff working in them, according to the established exchange rate policy, improving technology at the same time —which should be brought up to private sector standards, since the negotiating process should take place in all spheres.

3.3 Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: Improving Financing, Technology and Marketing, with self-financing in its policies and sustainability of development, the internal integration of each FTAA country, for productivity, competitiveness and decision-making in negotiations.

3.4 In the Social Area: all social organizations for production should be maximized both in terms of policy and in decentralization. These should also be developed in terms of financial, technical and training assistance, which should be carried out in all FTAA member countries in order to optimize the negotiating process.

SUGGESTIONS: It is proposed, to rapidly generalize intellectual property rights between FTAA member countries, as regards public and private productive entities; fundamentally negotiations with developed countries that give priority to such rights. Apart from increasing incentives for exceptions to private actors, in a real and unbureaucratic fashion, for civil not-for-profit organizations, NGOs and others, for application similar to what happens in other countries. This has been based on the clear asymmetry that exists between the inter-relationships of developed and Latin American countries, for which reason it is thought important to review and standardize what is proposed.

 
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