BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - The Inter-American Development Bank on May 9 will host a seminar on integration and the new regionalism in Latin America as well as on the prospects and possible impacts of the Free Trade Area of the Americas.
The conference will be held in the Raúl Prebish Auditorium on the 16th floor of the IDB-INTAL building, Esmeralda 130, Buenos Aires.
Juan José Taccone, director of the Institute for the Integration of Latin America and the Caribbean, will inaugurate the conference at 9 a.m. and later moderate a panel discussion on the question: “Do All Roads Lead to FTAA? Possible Models for Hemisphere Integration.”
Nohra Rey de Marulanda, manager of the IDB’s Department of Integration and Regional Development (INT), will moderate a panel on “The IDB Special Initiative on Commerce and Integration.”
Robert Devlin, deputy manager of INT, and Ernesto Stein, an IDB economist for the Research Department, will describe regional integration trends and their impact in a discussion that will center on the observations and conclusions of an IDB report titled, Beyond Borders: The New Regionalism in Latin America. Devlin will also moderate a panel on “Scope and Limits of the FTAA Negotiations.”
In addition to economists and experts of the IDB, speakers will include Martín Redrado, vice chancellor and Secretary of International Economic Relations of the Foreign Ministry; Daniel Polski, the Foreign Ministry's undersecretary of Economic Integration for the Americas and Mercosur; Roberto Bouzas, an independent researcher for the Consejo de Investigaciones Ciéntificas y Técnicas (CONICET) of Argentina and a professor of the University of San Andrés; Felix Peña, director of the Institute of Foreign Commerce of the Bank of Boston Foundation; and Pablo Sanguinetti, professor of the Torcuato Di Tella University, Argentina.