The Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Eu­ro­pean As­so­ci­a­tion of Cham­bers of Com­merce and In­dus­try (Eu­roCham­bres) have said mi­cro, small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es (MSMEs) can play a fresh and sig­nif­i­cant role in boost­ing re­la­tions be­tween Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean and the Eu­ro­pean Union, giv­en their sub­stan­tial share in the eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty of both re­gions' coun­tries.

This is one of the con­clu­sions of the doc­u­ment fi­nanced by the AL-IN­VEST Pro­gramme, Build­ing SME com­pet­i­tive­ness in the Eu­ro­pean Union and Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean. Pol­i­cy pro­pos­als by the pri­vate sec­tor, pre­sent­ed by Ali­cia B�rce­na, Ex­ec­u­tive Sec­re­tary of ECLAC, and Ar­nal­do Abruzzi­ni, Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of EU­ROCHAM­BRES, at the fourth CELAC-EU Busi­ness Sum­mit held at the Ho­tel W in San­ti­a­go, Chile.

The busi­ness meet­ing was held as part of the First Sum­mit of Heads of State and Gov­ern­ment of the Com­mu­ni­ty of Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean States (CELAC) and Eu­ro­pean Union (EU).B�rce­na said: "There needs to be more co­or­di­na­tion be­tween pub­lic poli­cies and pri­vate sec­tor ac­tions to break the vi­cious cir­cle that lim­its SME per­for­mance. As part of deep­en­ing CELAC-EU re­la­tions, we call on SMEs to be strate­gic play­ers in the in­clu­sive de­vel­op­ment of both re­gions' coun­tries".

Ar­nal­do Abruzzi­ni said" "There is no growth and no job cre­ation in Eu­rope or Latin Amer­i­ca with­out small com­pa­nies! Thus, in­creas­ing their com­pet­i­tive­ness by en­sur­ing their suc­cess­ful in­ter­na­tion­al­i­sa­tion is a key chal­lenge ahead of us but al­so an op­por­tu­ni­ty for EU and Latin Amer­i­ca to de­fine con­crete in­stru­ments that will fos­ter the strate­gic part­ner­ship be­tween the two re­gions. Al­so, an ef­fec­tive net­work of EU and Latin Amer­i­can busi­ness-sup­port or­ga­ni­za­tions is cru­cial to achieve these ob­jec­tives".

The doc­u­ment brings to­geth­er the vi­sions of al­most 50 Latin Amer­i­can and Eu­ro­pean busi­ness lead­ers and opin­ion mak­ers in­ter­viewed in De­cem­ber 2012, and aims to en­cour­age de­bate among se­nior po­lit­i­cal and busi­ness au­thor­i­ties in the EU and Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean about the role of SMEs in do­mes­tic economies and the sup­port they need to over­come their main lim­i­ta­tion: the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty gap with large com­pa­nies.