Following the mandates of the Latin American Council, the Permanent Secretariat of SELA has organized, since 1987, the Meeting of International Cooperation Directors for Latin America and the Caribbean as a meeting space for the exchange of ideas, experiences and best practices on issues of particular relevance to the agenda for cooperation and development assistance of Latin American and Caribbean countries.

In this context, for 2018, and with the traditional support of the Perez-Guerrero Trust Fund (PGTF) of the Group of 77, the XXIX Meeting of International Cooperation Directors was held in the context of an evaluation of cooperation in the field of commercial connectivity, with special emphasis on the impact of logistics enhancements on the region's productive linkages.

It is well known that the dynamics of international trade have distanced itself from the traditional approach towards the creation of Global Value Chains (GVCs), such as those cross-border production systems in which the countries involved add value to their products in accordance with their competitive advantages (UNCTAD, 2013).

In this regard, the impact of international trade on the economic performance could trigger greater accumulation of productive factors or increases in their productivity through the dissemination of technologies and knowledge. Thus, countries with high participation in GVCs and with high added value in their exports have experienced an average annual growth rate higher than those with high participation and low added value.

This low performance could be accounted for by the lack of an appropriate logistics framework in the production processes; the deficit of infrastructure associated with storage, distribution and transport processes; and the intensive use of road transport with respect to other means of mobilization, which puts at stake the international competitiveness of relatively smaller economies.

For the region, the reduction of connectivity costs would facilitate the countries’ repositioning in GVCs by increasing intra- and extra-regional trade for greater territorial interconnection and access to lower prices.

Therefore, given the impact on industrial development, productive linkages and trade facilitation, it is considered appropriate to analyze cooperation in the field of commercial connectivity, a topic to which participants paid special attention in the "XXIX Meeting of International Cooperation Directors for Latin America and the Caribbean: Strengthening cooperation in commercial connectivity in Latin America and the Caribbean: Towards greater integration into value chains".