BORDER DEVELOPMENT


BORDER INTEGRATION ZONES (BIZs)

Definition

Border Integration Zones (BIZs) are territorial areas located on the borders of adjacent Andean Community Member Countries, in which policies will be adopted and plans, programs, and projects will be executed jointly and coordinatedly to boost their development.

Community provision regulating them

The BIZs are regulated by Decision 501, adopted by the Andean Council of Foreign Ministers in June 2001

Establishment

The Andean Community Member Countries may establish such Border Integration Zones as they agree upon between themselves through the use of appropriate bilateral mechanisms, and with third countries, should they consider it advisable.

Already existing Border Integration Zones, Border Integration Regions, and Special Zones may adjust their provisions to the stipulations of Decision 501.

Objectives of the BIZs

  • To contribute to the diversification, strengthening and stabilization of economic, social, cultural, institutional, and political ties among the Member Countries;

  • To help create and start up economic and institutional mechanisms that will give these territorial zones more free-flowing trade and interconnect them with the rest of the Andean economies and the world market;

  • To streamline and boost economic transactions and trade, as well as the circulation of persons, goods, services, and vehicles;

  • To set up effective mechanisms for jointly establishing and administering border labor markets and for managing binational and international immigration traffic in the BIZs;

  • To give local associations preference by removing obstacles to the attainment of their capacities for production, trade, culture, and peaceful coexistence;

  • To contribute to the intensification of national administrative and economic decentralization processes;

  • To formalize and boost the longstanding social, economic, cultural, and ethnic processes and relations existing in those zones;

  • To adequately meet the economic, social, and cultural demands of the people living in the BIZs;

  • To increase and reinforce the supply of basic and or/social services for common use, such as aqueducts and electrification, communications, road infrastructure, health, education, and sports and tourist recreation services;

  • To investigate and use the contiguous renewable natural resources in a sustainable manner and to promote mechanisms for their appropriate conservation;

  • To contribute to the conservation and sustainable use of the natural resources, with particular attention to the biological diversity;

  • To carry out horizontal cooperation programs that promote the transfer of technical expertise among Member Countries or with border regions, with a view to the adoption of joint technological packages and the performance of production activities that combine or complement efforts; and

  • Any other activities that may be agreed upon bilaterally.

Criteria for identifying and demarcating the BIZs

  • That they be border regions where the legal, administrative, and functional conditions to be promoted will boost the productive and commercial capacity and the cultural wealth of the people living there;

  • That they include, in both countries, towns that spur or could spur development, as well as hubs of road systems that are in operation or whose construction is planned for the near future;

  • That they include economically and socially depressed areas in both countries;

  • That they foster the interconnection of border zones with a large research potential that are not a part of the active frontier at present;

  • That they contribute to the development of binational water basins where projects and activities of shared interest can be carried out.

Steps to be taken in the BIZs

  • Commit the participation of the social actors, business people, workers, private foundations, and civil associations;

  • Stimulate local, national, binational, and foreign private investment;

  • Promote initiatives aimed at producing strategic business alliances and creating Andean Multinational Enterprises (AMEs);

  • Establish or perfect, as the case may be, systems for the traffic of persons, vehicles, and goods, in order to boost border integration processes and help to create border markets;

  • Promote the development of participatory ecological, economic, social, and cultural zoning processes;

  • Boost the coordinated integral management of shared ecosystems;

  • Conduct joint tourism programs and boost economic activities linked to the tourist circuits that are promoted;

  • Undertake joint programs for valuing and strengthening the common cultural identity;

  • Reinforce national and binational bodies on border issues;

  • Promote the collection and exchange of initiatives among local officials, regional development bodies, and legislative representatives of the Member Countries;

  • Conduct shared or complementary basic road, telecommunication, and energy infrastructure projects and projects for increasing production;

  • Promote the shaping of an urban – regional structure

Their financing

The Andean countries will obtain financing for the BIZ plans, programs, and projects by bilaterally negotiating the establishment of the respective funds with subregional, regional, and multilateral bodies.

The Member Countries will take the necessary steps to incorporate investment budgets in their respective national development plans and such BIZ development plans, programs, and projects as they may agree upon in their national border policies