Ministers, deputy ministers and other senior authorities from the region’s countries, along with representatives of civil society and United Nations organizations, will analyze the progress and challenges related to planning for development in Latin America and the Caribbean during the XVI Conference of Ministers and Heads of Planning and the XVII Meeting of the Regional Council for Planning (RCP), which will be held on August 28-30 in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Participants in these gatherings will analyze the challenges, experiences and perspectives on planning for development in the region, along with its role in the implementation and fulfillment of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The meetings will kick off on Wednesday, August 28 with the XVI Conference of Ministers and Heads of Planning of Latin America and the Caribbean, where authorities will discuss practices, experiences and perspectives related to territorial planning in the region.

This conference will be inaugurated by authorities from the Government of Uruguay and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), as well as representatives of the United Nations in that country.

It will begin with a panel dedicated to planning for resilience in Caribbean countries, where that subregion’s territorial challenges in terms of natural risks and vulnerabilities will be examined, along with the need to strengthen capacities and resilience.

Subsequently, ministers from the region will analyze issues such as the policy challenges of territorial development, the implementation of these policies and their financing, and the territorialization of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, August 29, the XVII Meeting of the Regional Council for Planning of ECLAC’s Latin American and Caribbean Institute for Economic and Social Planning (ILPES) will commence.

This intergovernmental gathering will be inaugurated by Javier Abugattás, Chair of the Board of Directors of the Center for Strategic Planning (CEPLAN) of Peru, in his capacity as Chair of the RCP; Álvaro García, Director of Uruguay’s Planning and Budget Office; and Raúl García-Buchaca, ECLAC’s Deputy Executive Secretary for Management and Programme Analysis.

In the framework of this meeting, ECLAC will present the position document “Planning for Sustainable Territorial Development in Latin America and the Caribbean.” It will also report on progress made by the Regional Observatory on Planning for Development on matters of open government, subnational planning and initiatives on a subnational level for implementing the 2030 Agenda. Furthermore, the new applications of the Plan barometer tool will be unveiled.

The Regional Council for Planning is the subsidiary body of ECLAC that provides the substantive guidance for ILPES’s activities; it is made up of planning ministers and other such authorities from the United Nations regional commission’s Member States.

The programme for both meetings, along with general information and registration for participants, is available at this special website: https://crp-ilpes.cepal.org/17/en

All the details of the gathering can be followed live via ECLAC’s social media with the hashtags #planificaciónALC and #planningLAC.