Words of Andean Community Secretary General, Ambassador Allan Wagner Tizón, on occasion of the Solemn Session for the 35^th Anniversary of the signing of the Cartagena Agreement

Lima, May 24, 2004

We are celebrating today 35 years of Andean integration.

I would like to start by emphasizing that there are very few integration agreements having the historical and institutional weight of our agreement.

Secondly, I would like to mention that this initiative was created to promote development in our countries by means of a wide market-based industrialization.

This objective has driven the efforts of the organization throughout the initial stage of the process.

After twenty years, the development-oriented paradigms gave way to policies of openness boosted by the debt and adjustment crisis. Thus, in 1989, in Galápagos, the Andean countries opened their doors to intercommunity trade, achieving a growth of 5,500 percent with respect to the initial stage of the process.

In any case, the effect of such change effective since the Galápagos meeting was that, somehow, the development agenda started to disappear from the integration process.

Nowadays, the international globalization process poses a two-way agenda for us.

The external agenda, characterized by hemispheric and international free trade negotiations.

Contemporary history shows that countries with an “outwards” orientation generally grow more than those oriented “inwards”.

On the other hand, free trade, which is structured in the form of steady agreements aimed at ensuring broad horizons and promoting investments, a fundamental drive for growth.

This external agenda provides our countries with an additional opportunity, that of being part of the information society. If we ensure a proper connectivity, the new information and communications technologies may help us to close the gap existing in developing countries.

Together with this external agenda, there is the internal agenda which is equally critical, focused on three main challenges.

The first challenge is to close the social gap existing in our countries. To reduce inequality. This is the essential equality agenda.

The second challenge is closely related to the former: the need to strengthen democratic governance. Why should people in our countries prefer democracy if it contributes nothing to their welfare? Democracy must be efficient.

The third challenge has emerged with enormous strength in these days and will certainly define the future of our region: I am referring to competitiveness, without which it will be impossible to attract capitals, develop production, create jobs and have access to large international markets.

Andean integration must coordinate both agendas, thus providing the process with great dynamism, a network of synergies, to efficiently face the challenges posed by competitive international insertion and inclusive development with social equality.

Within this context, I would like to highlight three top priority and immediate tasks:

The first task is to strengthen our commercial integration with a view to a single, harmonized market characterized by free movement of agents therein; that is to say, a common market adapted for globalization purposes.

The second task deals with recovering the idea of development in the integration process agenda, this being understood now as competitiveness and social inclusion, thus placing small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as the rural sector, as top working priorities, together with education, infrastructure and technological innovation.

The third task is the search for social cohesion, in such a way that integration may contribute to overcome poverty, exclusion and inequality, which is essential to ensure democratic governance.

We expect that, following these efforts, the Andean Community will achieve more development, less inequality and more influence at worldwide level.

To accomplish this, one of our objectives should be the creation of a largely integrated South American space.

In addition to this enormous challenge, the cornerstone of which is infrastructure integration, represented by the IIRSA initiative, we need to mention the trade association efforts displayed with the United States and the European Union, and our projection towards the Pacific Basin.

In order to fulfill the objectives described above, the General Secretariat works closely with the main Andean Community bodies – the Council and the Commission – and is determined to act in coordination with the remaining Andean integration organizations. Together we will form the Andean Integration System, which represents an important strength in our process.

For all this, your presence here, in this 35th anniversary of Andean integration, is particularly significant and emblematic, and I wish to thank all of you once again.