ES | EN
27/02/2009

"This international meeting that takes place amid a crisis, is important because it demonstrates the will of not becoming isolated, but of working together in nets to look for a solution on the difficulties". With these words, the Córdoba Province Governor, Mr. Juan Schiaretti inaugurated the reunion of the international net of Regional Trade Promotion Organisms (RTPO), in which Agencia ProCórdoba is a partner.  
  
This event will take place during today and tomorrow in Córdoba City and it will have the presence of the representatives of the member entities in RTPO, of the authorities in the areas of foreign trade from other Provinces, of representatives from Sepyme and from Banco Nacion Argentina. 
 
The Governor presided over the conference on "The role of trade promotion organisms facing the challenges of the global market". He pointed out that the presence in the event of regional entities from other countries implies "the decision of being integrated into the world, of enhancing the forces with the objective of bettering the conditions for being present in the international market." 
 
On the other hand, Ercole Felippa, president of Agencia ProCórdoba, explained that the RTPO is a meeting point to gather the provincial areas from different parts of the world that are dedicated to promoting exports. "The members of this net are characterized by gathering two common denominators: in the first place, they are not central state organizations, and secondly they have the internationalization of companies as their main work objective", as Mr. Felippa highlighted. 
  
During the conference, Mr. Félix Peña, director of the Institute of International Trade in the Standard Bank Foundation, and Mr. Christian Volpe and Mr. Fabrizio Opertti, both economists from the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington (IDB-Washington) delivered speeches. 
  
Mr. Peña talked about the impact of the global crisis in the promotion of foreign trade and he explained that managers are disoriented and that they need a decoding on what is happening in function of what they have invested, the capital they have hazarded and the commitments generated by them during the latest years. 
  
For this reason, the specialist in international business relations concluded that "we have to give a conceptual jump as institutional nets for trade promotion, so that they allow for an integration among public, private and training entities."  

The BID, trade promotion and off-shoring services  
Then, Mr. Christian Volpe from the Integration and Trade division at the BID-Washington, presented the partial results of a survey they are carrying out on the actions of foreign trade promotion organisms.  
  
The economist described that trade promotion actions have had a direct impact not only on the companies’ exports, but they have rather influenced upon the diversification of products and destinations. Mr. Volpe also commented that those companies that received an integral accompaniment during their internationalization process had achieved more efficient results. 
  
Mr. Fabrizio Opertti, a specialist in commercial operations at the BID-Washington, centered his dissertation on offshore services; that is to say, the transfer on the part of one company of a process or a function onto a subsidiary company abroad, or through a third party participation into another country. 
  
Mr. Opertti specified that during 2007 the global off-shoring market has generated about 70 thousand millions dollars, from which Latin America captured only 6%. The main actors in this sector, India, Canada and Filipina are in strong growth. 
  
Lastly, the representative of the BID highlighted that Argentina has a lot of fortitudes to enter in the off-shoring market. Among them, Mr. Opertti mentioned the growing development of information technologies in the country, the population’s bilingual abilities, the cultural likeness with United States and Europe, the cities with great potential and the institutions in charge of promoting and facilitating exports.