Facilitation of international trade in goods

The FAL Bulletin is reverting to its original concept, that is, facilitation of trade in the broad sense. In the context of ECLAC, this is a topic covered by the International Trade Unit in the International Trade and Development Finance Division, to which the Transport Unit also belonged until it was incorporated into the Natural Resources and Infrastructure Division in April 1999.In an effort at inter-divisional cooperation starting with this issue, the International Trade Unit will be responsible for preparing four articles per year on trade facilitation for the FAL Bulletin. These are certain to be of great interest not only to those of our readers concerned with multi-modal ocean transport and customs procedures but also to those with links to the broader issue of promoting foreign trade in the region.

Trade facilitation and Central American integration: Customs modernization

The development of trade facilitation and regional integration is closely linked to the efficiency of public services and the competitiveness of the companies that support export activity. The importance of trade facilitation measures has been emphasized in various issues of the FAL Bulletin. On this occasion the subject is be discussed from the point of view of regional integration, and a case in Central America is considered of particular interest. El Salvador and Guatemala, by integrating their electronic systems for obtaining export licenses, have been able to reduce waiting times significantly. In Guatemala, in December 2000, there was a waiting time of 24 hours, whereas in November 2004 the procedure took 1.5 minutes via the Internet. This issue of the Bulletin is based on research into electronic government initiatives related to foreign trade, which is being conducted by the International Trade and Integration Division.

Subregión Norte de América Latina y el Caribe: información del sector agropecuario, 2000-2010

Incluye bibliografía.

Global integration, disarticulation and competitiveness in Mexico’s electromechanical sector: A structural analysis

This article analyses the dual functioning of the Mexican electromechanical sector between 1994 and 2008, as distinct from other globalized activities. An estimation of labour productivity in 52 industrial classes finds that structural heterogeneity increased particularly in the 1994-2001 subperiod, alongside technical and organizational improvements that were increasingly concentrated in a small number of subsidiary companies of transnational automotive-assembly enterprises. The application of a shift-share technique also revealed the absence of any significant structural change. Lastly, an extension of the methodology to evaluate competitiveness —developed by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (eclac)— and its application to a second database that reclassifies 1,345 foreign trade products, makes it possible to contrast these changes with the dynamism of the global production networks in which the leading firms of the sector in Mexico are engaged.

A comparative analysis of productivity in Brazilian and Mexican manufacturing industries

This article analyses productivity trends in Brazilian and Mexican manufacturing industries between 1995 and 2009, a period in which international competition intensified sharply. A total of 14 manufacturing industries are considered, using two methods based on: (i) the Leontief (1951) model to measure the consumption of intermediate goods used in production; and (ii) the analysis of total factor productivity (TFP). The studies performed show that manufacturing trends have diverged in the two countries. In Mexico, an increased need for imported goods and services was offset by a reduction in domestic goods and service requirements, and an increase in the TFP of production. In the case of Brazil, the fact that manufactured goods markets are more isolated from foreign trade seems to have contributed to a weak productivity performance.

Latin America and the Caribbean in the World Economy 2015. The regional trade crisis: assessment and outlook.

With external conditions sluggish and highly uncertain as the global economy still struggles to shake off the effects of the economic crisis of 2008-2009, the Latin American and Caribbean region is not isolated from these effects and is projected to record a small drop in gross domestic product (GDP) in 2015, followed by a weak recovery in 2016. Against this backdrop, 2015 will be the third consecutive year of increasing declines in regional export values; a state of affairs not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. This poor performance reflects the end of the commodity price boom, the slowdown of the Chinese economy, the weak recovery of the eurozone and the lacklustre economic activity in the region, particularly in South America.

Anuario estadístico de América Latina y el Caribe, 1986 = Statistical yearbook for Latin America and the Caribbean, 1986

Publicado en junio de 1987