After travelling to Chile, Spain and Portugal, the Latin American Economic Outlook 2008 returned home to be presented officially to OECD Permanent Delegations and other parts of the Organisation, as well as to the French public. This event was hosted by the Maison de l’Amerique Latine, gathering together OECD staff, a wide range of representatives of French public institutions, the private sector, the media and the general public.

  The French Ambassador to the OECD, Philippe Marland, and

Fernando Ballestero, Chair of the Development Centre’s Governing Board and Spanish Ambassador to the OECD, led the Parisian launch of ‘LEO’. Javier Santiso, the report’s main coordinator and acting director of the Development Centre, set out in detail the main conclusions reached, giving special emphasis to three topics: fiscal legitimacy, investment in telecommunications, and trade with China and India.

  In the afternoon, separate sessions were dedicated to the two main topics analysed in the Latin American Economic Outlook 2008. The first panel, chaired by journalist Braulio Moro (Radio France Internationale), focused on the topic of the commercial impact of the Asian giants in Latin America. The President of the American University of Paris, Gerardo della Paolera, and , Carlos Quenan, professor of the Institut des Hautes Études de l'Amerique latine, agreed on the importance of both the challenges and opportunities offered by China and India for the development of Latin America.

  The second session, chaired by BBC journalist Juan Carlos Rincón, concentrated on how the private sector can contribute to regional development. Senior executives from firms such as Accor (Serge Ragozin), CNP (Edmond Alphandéry) and Alstom (Pascal Drouhaud) shared their companies’ experiences in this field.

  Alain Rouquié, President of the Maison de l’Amérique Latine, closed the event, which was followed by a reception hosted by the Deputy Secretary General of the French Foreign Affairs Ministry at the Quai d’Orsay.

• Program of the Presentation (pdf)
• Presentation of the report by Javier Santiso (in French, pdf)