More than 4,000 business leaders from 77 countries participated in a recent forum hosted by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to kickstart economic growth in Latin America and the Caribbean by deepening digital trade and investment opportunities between the region and South Florida.
According to the IDB, the first-of-its-kind event bolstered ties between Miami’s rapidly growing tech community and Latin America and the Caribbean in a broad range of areas, including connectivity, venture-capital funding, and the digital empowerment of female-led tech companies.
“Digitalisation has defined the winners and the losers of the pandemic, underscoring the importance of connectivity and the need to ensure that every single person and business is online. That creates a huge opportunity both for Latin America and the Caribbean and for Miami. We are here to help people and investors of all types seize that opportunity,” IDB president Mauricio Claver-Carone said.
At least 960 companies from Latin America and the Caribbean and Miami participated in virtual matchmaking sessions at the event, leading to $16 million in expected deals.
“Such sessions have been remarkably successful creating business. The event also served as a special tenth-anniversary edition of the IDB’s flagship event for the global digital services sector, Outsource2LAC, which has facilitated more than 12,000 B2B meetings resulting in more than $310 million in projected business deals,” the IDB said.
As part of the event, the IDB also released a new study on the state of connectivity in Latin America and the Caribbean. The study underscored how important Internet access is to economic growth and employment.
The IDB said Latin America and the Caribbean could create more than 15 million jobs and boost GDP by almost eight per cent simply by closing its connectivity gap with members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
To expand ties between Miami and the region, ConnectAmericas, a social network for companies dedicated to promoting trade and investment, also launched its “Digitalisation in International Trade” challenge as part of the IDB’s “Growing Together ” programme.
Increasing digitalisation and offering greater help to small companies are key pillars of Vision 2025 , the IDB said, adding that it plans to help Latin America and the Caribbean not only recover but usher in an era of robust development.
Across the region, the IDB, through its Tecnolatinas Report, has identified 1,005 technology startups that each raised more than $1 million.
These companies employ over 245,000 people and are collectively valued at $221 billion in 2020, up from just $7 billion in 2010.