I am delighted to be in Mexico for the 7th Ministerial Forum for Development in Latin America and the Caribbean. UNDP greatly appreciates Mexico’s willingness to host the forum.

I greet all Ministers present from across Latin America and the Caribbean. UNDP very much values the ongoing support of the Spanish Agency for International Development Co-operation (AECID) for this annual Forum, and for Mexico’s support for Caribbean participation this year.  

Ever since its inception in 2007, this Forum has provided a unique space for ministers working on social and economic development to exchange experiences on and discuss solutions to the challenges they are addressing. Latin American and Caribbean countries have been innovating in social policy for years, and that makes the experience sharing at this annual event very useful for policy-makers. 

Our host, Mexico, is itself pursuing significant reforms to build stronger institutions and a more competitive and inclusive economy. Mexico’s initiatives on e-governance and access to public services have also been very innovative over a number of years.

Social progress: more than income - There can be no doubt that Latin America has made impressive progress on reducing poverty over the past decade. Between 2002 and 2012, the proportion of people in the region living on fewer than four dollars a day decreased from 42 per cent to 25 per cent, and the percentage of people entering the middle class increased from 21 per cent to 34 per cent.  Poverty has also been reduced in some Caribbean countries in a similar timescale. For example, Trinidad and Tobago reduced poverty by seven percentage points between 2000 and 2010, and Jamaica also saw a decline in poverty of two percentage points in the same period.

More recently, however, the rate of reduction of poverty and inequality in the region appears to be slowing down. There are a number of reasons given for that, including slower growth in the size of low-skilled labor markets, and the existence of fiscal barriers which do not allow for enough expansion of social protection programmes. As well, an estimated 37 per cent of the population – more than 200 million people – are classified as vulnerable to falling back into poverty. 

This situation calls for both a focus on inclusive growth and an expansion in social protection. Future progress needs to be fully inclusive of women, youth, indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, older people, and people of African descent.

Poverty has many dimensions – impacting on not only income levels, but also on health status and access to education, overall living conditions, the acquisition of basic assets, participation, and human security.

In recognition of this, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, among others, use multidimensional poverty measures to evaluate progress. Factors such as the respective amount of time spent by men and women on household duties and in the workplace also matter a great deal, as do subjective dimensions such as perceptions of empowerment and dignity. 

Ultimately, and in line with UNDP’s human development approach, social progress is about expanding the capabilities people have, and enhancing their opportunities and the freedom they enjoy to be able to make their own life choices. 

This year’s forum is firmly focused on “Multidimensional progress and inclusive development”, and brings together this very impressive gathering of Ministers and high-level officials to discuss how to promote the region’s development in all its dimensions. 

To form the basis for your discussions the agenda has been arranged around the themes of fiscal equity, social inclusion, and effective institutions – all of which we believe are relevant to inclusive development and progress.

Allow me to comment briefly on each in turn:

Fiscal Equity - The promotion of equity through progressive fiscal policies is vital for advancing human development. Reflecting this, many countries are looking for ways to improve the progressivity of both taxes and fiscal expenditures.

Fiscal space is needed to make more resources available for the poor. This requires both policy innovation and strong political will. As well, the regressive impact of indirect taxes should not be allowed to cancel out the progressive impact of social expenditure. There are proven ways of mitigating the impact of indirect taxation on the poor.

UNDP works with a number of countries on strengthening fiscal equity. Last year, for example, we joined forces with the Secretariat of Social Development (SEDESOL) to evaluate what the impact of different levels of value added tax (VAT) would be on poverty and inequality. I understand that the outcome of our joint work informed the final decision on setting a level of VAT which minimized the impact on the poor. 

Social Inclusion - The promotion of social inclusion, through more inclusive financial, labor, and industrial policies, also plays a big role in lifting human development. 

Today, most countries in the region have cash transfer programmes in place, along with other strategies to lift human development. 

Income inequality and other forms of exclusion, however, will continue to hamper social progress if the poor lack the opportunity to be empowered agents of their own development. The challenge now is to build on the progress achieved to date, and to ensure that people get access to better jobs, livelihoods, resources, and entrepreneurship initiatives. This is particularly important for the youth of the region, for whom the unemployment rate is almost double that of adults, and for women.

The new Prospera strategy here in Mexico has a package of policies aimed at promoting social inclusion through access to credit, business opportunities, and higher education. So do the Steps-to-Work initiative, which provides job training and on the job experience in Jamaica, and Colombia’s Cultura del Ahorro which offers financial education and incentives, such as lower interest rates, to female head of households. 

UNDP has been working with a number of countries in the region on promoting social inclusion, including through job creation and improved work conditions. 

In El Salvador, for example, we support small-scale business projects in which young people previously associated with gangs can gain experience in small business management and generate income for themselves and their families. 

We also actively promote gender equality in workplaces in Latin America and the Caribbean, supporting gender equality certification programmes in twelve countries of the region. 1,800 public and private organizations have already been certified. 

Effective institutions – not least in the social policy area - are critical for making multidimensional development progress. 

A number of countries in Latin America have taken significant steps to strengthen their capacities to design and implement social policies. This includes the use of multi-dimensional poverty maps, sophisticated poverty targeting systems, and state-of the art impact evaluation assessments. To this end, many countries, including Argentina and Costa Rica, have established professional, technocratic, and apolitical bodies aimed at promoting accountability and results. A good example is Mexico’s widely acclaimed CONEVAL. Overall, the region has moved a long way from the mostly ad hoc social assistance and social emergency programs of the 1980s and 1990s.

Supporting institutional capacity building is at the core of UNDP’s work in Latin America and the Caribbean. Through our SIGOB programme we have worked with some 15,000 civil servants in seventeen countries, to help strengthen public sector workflows, procedures, and management systems across a range of policy areas. 

In conclusion, it is important to emphasize again that Latin America and the Caribbean have made tremendous development progress in recent years. 

The experiences and knowledge gathered on this journey are significant, and it is important to share them within the region and beyond. The time to do that is now, as UN Member States design the global development agenda which will succeed the MDGs in the post-2015 era, and as they contemplate how it can be implemented. 

We hope that this Forum will be useful as a platform for knowledge exchange. Please count on UNDP’s continuing and enthusiastic support for all your important efforts for inclusive and sustainable development.