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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