Trade, Investment and Financial Stability
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Mar del Plata, Argentina, 2005
IV Summit of the Americas |
Corporate Social Responsibility
At the
Fourth Summit of the Americas,
Heads of State and Government emphasized that trade plays a
key role in the fight against poverty.
In the
Declaration of Mar del Plata
leaders committed to achieve greater economic integration by
addressing the problems that stem from trade barriers and
unsustainable debt. Regarding this fact, some member states
recognized the significant contribution of processes of
economic integration and trade liberalization in the Americas,
maintaining their commitment to achieve a balanced and
comprehensive FTAA Agreement aimed to expand trade flows and
to keep trade free from subsidies and trade- distorting
practices. Other member states maintained that the necessary
conditions are not yet in place for achieving a balanced and
equitable free trade agreement. All members agreed to explore
both positions in light of the outcomes of the World Trade
Organization ministerial meetings that were held in 2005.
Leaders expressed their commitment to attain an ambitious and
balanced outcome at the Doha Round based, inter alia, on the
principle of special and differential treatment for developing
countries.
Heads of State and Government also considered it important to
promote and support actions that will facilitate the
participations of small and medium-sized enterprises in
domestic markets and international trade through opening new
markets for SME goods and services.
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Monterrey, Mexico, 2004
Special Summit of the Americas |
Corporate Social Responsibility
At the
Special Summit of the Americas, Heads of State and
Government recognized the important role that trade plays in
promoting sustained growth and economic development
In the
Declaration of Nuevo León, leaders reaffirmed their
commitment to advance the Doha Agenda in order to benefit all
economies by promoting, among other measures, better access to
markets and by eliminating export subsidies and substantially
reducing trade-distorting domestic support. Leaders
specifically underlined the importance of the trade
liberalization in agricultural products.
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Quebec City, Canada, 2001
Third Summit of the Americas |
Trade and Investment
The overarching goals of the
Quebec City Summit
in the area of Trade, Investment and
Financial Stability included the promotion of regional
prosperity by raising the standard of living, improving
working conditions and protecting of the environment.
Moreover, Heads of State and Government strengthened their
commitment to establish the FTAA by 2005. This objective was
set at the Miami Summit in 1994 and reinforced with the
official launching of negotiations at the Santiago Summit in
1998. Hemispheric leaders stated that the agreement should be
balanced, comprehensive and consistent with commitments at the
World Trade
Organization (WTO). The FTAA is to
be designed to take into account the size and levels of
development of participating economies.
In response to increasing interest among
civil society groups in the FTAA negotiations, the Quebec City
Plan of Action calls for special efforts to be made to provide
information on the FTAA as the negotiations proceed. For
example, the FTAA preliminary text and information about the
negotiations is now available on the official website at
http://www.ftaa-alca.org.
Economic and Financial Stability
In the 2001 Quebec City Summit, the
economic and financial stability of the Americas was once
again given prominence in the Plan of Action. All measures to
ensure financial and economic stability adopted by the
Ministers of Finance at their meeting on April 3-4, 2001 were
given full support. The importance of the wide distribution
of the benefits of globalization to all regions and social
sectors of the Hemisphere was affirmed. It was also agreed
that greater attention must be given to increasing economic
growth and reducing poverty in a mutually reinforcing way.
Leaders supported, as well, efforts to increase trade in
goods, services and capital while addressing the needs of
vulnerable groups and smaller economies. In this context they
instructed finance
ministers to
continue to explore ways to ensure that international
financial institutions, regional development banks and other
international bodies take adequate account of Summit
initiatives in their lending policies and technical assistance
programs for the Hemisphere.
Corporate Social Responsibility
The third specific
objective under this area of the Quebec City Plan of Action is
to promote
the development, adoption and
implementation by the business community of principles of good
conduct that will advance corporate social and environmental
responsibility. To this end, leaders support dialogue among
business, non-government organizations, national agencies,
international organizations and other interested parties on
ways to encourage increased corporate social responsibility
throughout the Hemisphere. One element of this dialogue will
be a conference on corporate social responsibility, to be
convened in 2002 by the
Organization of
American States (OAS), the
Inter-American
Development Bank (IDB) and other
inter-American organizations.
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Santiago,
Chile, 1998
Second Summit of the Americas |
Trade
and Investment
Negotiations for the FTAA were launched during
the
Santiago Summit, which took place in April
1998. In the Plan of Action, funds were allocated to assist the
FTAA and provide the technical support required for the hemisphere’s
smaller economies. While reiterating the mandates from the Miami
Summit, this second Summit also addressed a variety of other issues,
including tariffs and non-tariff barriers, investment, subsidies,
agriculture, technical barriers to trade, intellectual property
rights, government procurement, safeguards, sanitary and
phytosanitary, rules of origin, antidumping and countervailing
duties, dispute resolution, competition policy and standards and
procedures. In Santiago, Heads of State and Government also
committed to achieving concrete progress in the FTAA negotiations
before 2000.
Economic and Financial Stability
In the
1998 Santiago Summit, the strengthening,
modernizing and integration of financial markets was addressed
through the implementation of the Basle Core Principles for
Effective Banking Supervision. A commitment was made, as well, to
improve banking and securities market clearance and settlement
systems in the Hemisphere.
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Miami,
Florida, USA, 1994
First
Summit of the Americas |
Trade and Investment
Free trade has been a fundamental
issue of the Summits of the Americas since the
First Summit
took place in Miami, in 1994. In
this first Summit the basis for the Free Trade Area of the
Americas (FTAA) was established in its Plan of Action. The
preparatory phase of the FTAA process was then initiated, and
several subsequent Ministerial level meeting took place for
this preparation. This phase lasted for three years, until
the Second Summit of the Americas took place in Santiago,
Chile.
Economic and Financial Stability
In the
1994 Miami Summit, a Committee on
Hemispheric Financial Issues was created to promote the
liberalization of capital movements. It was also agreed that
countries should work with the
Inter-American
Development Bank (IDB) to prepare a
comprehensive list of national capital regulations in order to
promote transparency, as well as study and review problems of
debt within the individual countries.
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Third Summit of the Americas,
Quebec City, Canada 2001
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Infrastructure
and
Regulatory
Environment |
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Trade and Investment |
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Ensure negotiations of the FTAA Agreement are concluded no
later than January 2005 and seek its entry into force as
soon as possible thereafter but, in any case, no later than
December 2005, in conformity with the principles and
objectives established in the San Jose Ministerial
Declaration, in particular the achievement of a balanced,
comprehensive agreement, consistent with WTO rules and
disciplines, the results of which will constitute a single
undertaking embodying the rights and obligations, as
mutually agreed:
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Ensure the transparency of the negotiating process,
including through publication of the preliminary draft FTAA
Agreement in the four official languages as soon as possible
and the dissemination of additional information on the
progress of negotiations;
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Foster through their respective national dialogue mechanisms
and through appropriate FTAA mechanisms, a process of
increasing and sustained communication with civil society to
ensure that it has a clear perception of the development of
the FTAA negotiating process; invite civil society to
continue to contribute to the FTAA process; and, to this
end, develop a list of options that could include
dissemination programs in smaller economies, which could be
supported by the Tripartite Committee or other sources;
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Ensure full participation of all our countries in the FTAA,
taking into consideration the differences in the levels of
development and size of the economies of the Hemisphere, in
order to create opportunities for the full participation of
the smaller economies and to increase their level of
development;
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Supervise and support, with technical assistance, the full
implementation of adopted business facilitation measures;
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Instruct our representatives in the institutions of the
Tripartite Committee to continue securing the allocation of
the resources necessary to contribute to the support of the
work of the FTAA Administrative Secretariat;
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Urge the Tripartite Committee institutions to continue to
respond positively to requests for technical support from
FTAA entities; and request the institutions, according to
their respective internal procedures, to favorably consider
requests for technical assistance related to FTAA issues
from member countries, in particular from the smaller
economies, in order to facilitate their integration into the
FTAA process;
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Economic and Financial Stability |
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Welcome and support the work of our Ministers of Finance,
who met in Toronto, Canada on April 3-4, 2001, to promote
financial and economic stability as well as strong and
sustainable growth, as fundamental preconditions for
accelerated development and poverty reduction, and to ensure
that the benefits of globalization are broadly and equitably
distributed to all our people;
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Recognize the value of efforts undertaken to advance
Hemispheric integration, including improved access to goods,
services, capital and technology, to achieve the full range
of social and other objectives;
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Support the efforts of Finance Ministers to address the
challenges associated with globalization, to protect the
most vulnerable and prevent crises, and affirm the
importance of having the benefits of globalization widely
distributed to all regions and social sectors of our
countries, recognizing, at the same time, the unique
challenges faced by small states;
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Affirm that greater attention must be given to increasing
economic growth and reducing poverty in a mutually
reinforcing way, and that this priority must include social
sector policies that effectively achieve poverty reduction
and greater investment in people, with improved access to
basic education and health services;
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Instruct our Finance Ministers to continue to explore ways
to ensure that international financial institutions,
regional development banks and other international bodies
take adequate account of Summit initiatives in their lending
policies and technical assistance programs for the
Hemisphere;
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Corporate Social Responsibility |
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Recognizing the central role that businesses of all
sizes play in the creation of prosperity and the flow and
maintenance of trade and investment in the Hemisphere, and, noting
that businesses can make an important contribution to sustainable
development and increasing access to opportunities, including the
reduction of inequalities in the communities in which they
operate, and taking into consideration the increasing expectations
of our citizens and civil society organizations that businesses
carry out their operations in a manner consistent with their
social and environmental responsibilities:
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Support the continued analysis and consideration in the OAS
of corporate social responsibility, ensuring that civil
society, including the private sector, is appropriately and
regularly consulted and that this process benefits from the
experiences of other international organizations, national
agencies and non-governmental actors;
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Convene a meeting as early as feasible in 2002 with the
support of the OAS, the IDB and other relevant
inter-American organizations involving representatives from
governments, civil society, including mainly the business
community, to deepen dialogue on corporate social
responsibility in the Hemisphere, raise awareness of key
issues to be determined and discuss ways to promote the
development, adoption and implementation by the business
community of principles of good conduct that will advance
corporate social and environmental responsibility;
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Quebec
Plan of Action (complete version):
English |
Spanish |
French |
Portuguese |
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Key
documents in the area of Trade, Investment and Financial Stability:
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Trade
and
Investment |
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Doha Development Agenda: Doha Work Programme
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Free Trade Area of the Americas, Eight
Ministerial Meeting, Miami, USA, November 20, 2003
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The Eighth FTAA Ministerial in November 2003 in Miami ended
with the commitment to continue the negotiations and proceed
under the agreed deadline of January 2005. The following
points are included in the Ministerial Declaration (see
www.ftaa-alca.org
for the full text):
The vision of
the FTAA is to achieve an agreement that is comprehensive
and balanced while addressing the issue of different levels
of development and size of economies in the Hemisphere.
Taking this into account, Ministers recognized that
countries may assume different levels of commitments.
Ministers were mindful that
negotiations must aim at a balanced agreement that addresses
the issue of differences in the levels of development and
size of economies of the Hemisphere, through various
provisions and mechanisms,
paying special attention to the needs, economic conditions
and opportunities of smaller economies. The Trade
Negotiating Committee (TNC), consisting of vice ministers of
trade, received instructions to develop a common and
balanced set of rights and obligations applicable to all
countries. The TNC was also instructed to establish
procedures for the negotiation, on a plurilateral basis, of
additional liberalization and disciplines, for countries
that choose to do so. Guidance on text issues included
drafting proposals on the institutional structure of the
FTAA agreement and specific steps needed to finalize text
such as legal review and translation. Ministers instructed
market access negotiations to be completed by September 30,
2004.
Ministers also
recognized that smaller and less developed economies will
require financial support to assist in the process of
adjustment resulting from hemispheric integration. They
reiterated support for the Hemispheric Cooperation Program
to provide assistance during the negotiations and for
implementation of the agreement.
Ministers
welcomed the growing number of contributions from civil
society, and expressed interest in creating a civil society
consultative committee within the institutional framework of
the FTAA upon the agreement’s entry into force. They
announced that the present draft of the FTAA agreement is
available to the public in English, Spanish, French and
Portuguese on the official FTAA website.
The Tripartite
Committee, consisting of OAS, IDB and ECLAC, was thanked for
its technical support and the Government of Mexico for
hosting the FTAA Administrative Secretariat during the
negotiations.
Ministers decided on future
meetings of the Trade Negotiations Committee to be held in
Puebla, Mexico, Panama City Panama and Trinidad and Tobago.
They received requests from eleven cities to host the
permanent site of the FTAA Secretariat, seven in the US, two
in Mexico, one each in Panama and Trinidad and Tobago. The
next Ministerial meeting will be in Brazil in 2004.
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Implementation of Summit of the Americas
Mandate to support the FTAA
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"Working
together with the Inter-American Development Bank and the
Secretariat for Economic Affairs of Mexico, the General
Secretariat of the OAS has helped assure the non-interrupted
flow of the negotiating process for the Free Trade Area of
the Americas (FTAA) as the negotiating venue shifted from
Panama to Mexico in March 2003, under a schedule agreed to
five years ago by Ministers responsible for trade in the
Hemisphere. The GS/OAS has established a trust through which
funds can be channeled to the FTAA Administrative
Secretariat and it can have the legal capacity to operate in
Mexico, thereby assuring continual logistical and
administrative support to negotiators from the 34
participating countries. Moreover, the GS/OAS has also
accredited the FTAA Administrative Secretariat's specialized
international staff as GS/OAS associate staff in Mexico, so
that they can enjoy privileges and immunities there. The
negotiations in Mexico, directed by co-chairs Brazil and the
United States, will consist of daily meetings of trade
officials from across the Americas working to construct the
FTAA, in which barriers to trade in goods and services, and
investment will be progressively eliminated. Mexico will be
the final negotiation site leading up to the projected
January 2005 conclusion of the FTAA agreement. For more
information consult the FTAA home page at
http://www.ftaa-alca.org."
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VII FTAA Trade Ministerial Meeting
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The VII Trade Ministerial Meeting took
place November 1, 2002, in Quito, Ecuador, within the
framework of negotiations towards the Free Trade Area of the
Americas agreement.
Accomplishments noted since the sixth ministerial meeting
included: elaboration of a second draft of the FTAA
agreement and its release to the public, the establishment
of rules and timetables for market access negotiations,
agreement on guidelines for the treatment of differences in
levels of development and size of the economies and
initiation of the Hemispheric Cooperation Program to assist
countries in negotiations, implementation and adjustment to
commitments within the FTAA process. The next phase of
negotiations include treatment of issues such as
agriculture, labor, civil society and the institutional
framework of the FTAA. The full ministerial declaration is
available on
http://www.sice.oas.org/FTAA/Quito/minis/minist_e.asp
The ministerial meeting as well
as the preparatory vice ministerial meetings and negotiating
group meetings were supported by the Tripartite Committee
consisting of the OAS, the IDB and ECLAC as well as by the
Administrative Secretariat in Panama. The chairmanship of
the FTAA negotiations passed from Ecuador to co-chairs
Brazil and the United States. The final two Trade
Ministerials are scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2003 in
Miami, United States and in 2004 in Brazil.
The VII Foro Empresarial de las
Americas was held immediately before the ministerial with
the participation of over 900 business representatives from
34 countries. A civil society forum entitled “Toward Civil
Society Participation in the Americas” with about 75
participants also took place. Both forums passed
recommendations to the trade ministers in joint closing
sessions.
For
remarks by the Secretary General of the OAS, Dr. Cesar
Gaviria, please click
here.
For remarks by the President of the
Inter-American Development Bank, Dr. Enrique Iglesias,
please click
here.
For remarks by the
Executive Secretary of the Economic
Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Mr. José
Antonio Ocampo, please click
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