Seventeenth meeting of national customs directors of Latin America, Spain and Portugal

The seventeenth Meeting of National Customs Directors of Latin America, Spain and Portugal was held in Santa Cruz, Bolivia from 27 to 31 January 1997. The meeting was attended by representatives from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Spain, Uruguay and Venezuela. Observers from Australia, France, Japan and the United States were also present. Representatives of the following international organizations also attended the meeting: Association of Customs Agents of Uruguay, International Association of Professional Customs Agents (ASAPRA), Latin American Integration Organization (LAIA), Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Latin American Convention of Courier Enterprises (CLADEC), Central American Institute of Business Administration (INCAE), Board of the Cartagena Agreement (JUNAC), Organization of American States (OAS), World Customs Organization (WCO), and Postal Union of the Americas, Spain and Portugal (PUASP).

ECLAC Notes Nº 58

Special edition dedicated to the Thirty-second session of ECLAC (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic,9-13 June 2008): Structural Change and Productivity Growth, 20 Years Later. Old problems, new opportunities ECLAC Presents Report on Financing for Development Op-ed by ECLAC's Executive Secretary, José Luis Machinea. New Opportunities for Latin America and the Caribbean Highlights. Public-private Alliances for Export DevelopmentIndicatorsOp-ed by ECLAC's Executive Secretary, José Luis Machinea. Latin America and theCaribbean in the New International Context Recent titles Calendar of events

Latin America and the middle-income trap

Includes bibliography.

Adolescents and the right to education

The inalienable right of all people to education is enshrined in various international covenants, conventions and agreements, yet the actual fulfilment of this right varies in quantity and quality from one country to the other. On average, the compulsory length of schooling in the countries of the region is 10 years. Half of these countries have already made all secondary education mandatory, which is eminently reasonable since it is commonly accepted as a minimum threshold for lifelong well-being and skills-building. The main article in this edition of Challenges discusses this subject in depth, and shows how far behind we are in ensuring that all adolescents have access to the education to which they are entitled. It focuses on the low secondary school-completion rate and low level of learning acquisition, the strong socioeconomic and sociocultural stratification, the lack of citizenship skills, and the persistence of a relatively high dropout rate at all levels of secondary education. The main challenge in guaranteeing the right to education lies in reducing learning and attainment gaps by helping the groups that are presently lagging behind the most. As is customary, there are also reports on relevant meetings and conferences held in the region over the past half-year, together with the opinions of experts and adolescents and success stories in promoting school attendance in Uruguay and the Dominican Republic.

Trade and Development Nexus: reflections on the performance of trade in goods under the Cariforum-European Union Partnership agreement a Cariforum perspective

Given the asymmetry in the levels of development and capacity which exist between the EU and CARIFORUM States, the architects of the CARIFORUM-European Union (EU) Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA)1 anticipated the need for review and monitoring of the impacts of implementation. Article 5 and other provisions in the Agreement therefore specifically mandate that monitoring be undertaken to ensure that the Agreement benefits a wide cross-section of the population in member countries. The paper seeks to provide a preliminary assessment of the impact of the EPA on CARIFORUM countries. In so doing, it highlights some critical information and implementation gaps and challenges that have emerged during the implementation process. The analysis however, is restricted to goods trade. The services sector will be the subject of a separate report. The paper draws on a combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses. While the paper undertakes a CARIFORUM-wide analysis for the most part, five CARIFORUM member states including Barbados, Dominican Republic, Guyana, Saint Kitts and Nevis and Saint Lucia are examined more closely in some instances. These economies were selected by virtue of economic structure and development constraints, as a representative subset of CARIFORUM, which comprises the CARICOM membership as well as the Dominican Republic.

An assessment of the economic and social impacts of climate change on the energy sector in the Caribbean

The present report assesses the economic and social impacts of climate change on the energy sector in Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Cuba, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago. In the study, the Artificial Neural Network methodology was employed to model the relationship between climate change and energy demand. The viability of the actions proposed were assessed using cost benefit analyses based on models from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) of the United States of America.

The impact of climate change on the tourism sector in the Caribbean

The main aim of this study is to estimate the economic impact of climate change on nine countries in the Caribbean basin: Aruba, Barbados, Dominican Republic, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, Netherlands Antilles, Saint Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago. A typical tourism demand function, with tourist arrivals as the dependent variable, is used in the analysis. To establish the baseline, the period under analysis is 1989-2007 and the independent variables are destination country GDP per capita and consumer price index, source country GDP, oil prices to proxy transportation costs between source and destination countries. At this preliminary stage the climate variables are used separately to augment the tourism demand function to establish a relationship, if any, among the variables. Various econometric models (single OLS models for each country, pooled regression, GMM estimation and random effects panel models) were considered in an attempt to find the best way to model the data. The best fit for the data (1989-2007) is the random effects panel data model augmented by both climate variables, i.e. temperature and precipitation. Projections of all variables in the model for the 2008-2100 period were done using forecasting techniques. Projections for the climate variables were undertaken by INSMET. The cost of climate change to the tourism sector was estimated under three scenarios: A2, B2 and BAU (the mid-point of the A2 and B2 scenarios). The estimated costs to tourism for the Caribbean subregion under the three scenarios are all very high and ranges from US$43.9 billion under the B2 scenario to US$46.3 billion under the BAU scenario.