LatAm integration more pressing than ever: UN agency

SANTIAGO - Today's climate of uncertainty gives urgency to Latin America's project of integration, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) said on Tuesday.

"Faced with the current great uncertainty, making progress towards regional integration is more necessary than ever," the ECLAC's Executive Secretary Alicia Barcena told a meeting of foreign ministers from the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States held in Bavaro, a city of the Dominican Republic.

Barcena also warned of the challenges regional countries face given the bleak economic forecast.

According to the ECLAC, the regional economy shrank 1.1 percent in 2016 and will see a scant 1.3-percent expansion in 2017, while the global economy remains weak.

"Inequality has worsened ... migration to developed regions has increased, the digital revolution has intensified the concentration of businesses in the US and, in Asia, climate change has been revealed to be the market's biggest flaw," said Barcena.

In addition, the odds are stacked against Latin America's developing countries, noted Barcena, saying that there is "an international system with few regulations, where weak multilateral mechanisms benefit the strongest players."

Regional countries should promote new public-private sector partnerships to modernize and spur the productive sector through clean-energy ventures and other environmental initiatives, suggested the executive secretary.

Countries should also launch fiscal policies to curb tax evasion, diversify investment and drive industrialization, added Barcena.

Those issues will be debated at the upcoming Forum of Latin American and Caribbean Countries on Sustainable Development, which is to be held in Mexico in April and designed to follow up on the UN-set development goals towards 2030.