Past Events – 2017
The Ninth RFM Meeting was held in Washington DC on October 11, 2017. The discussion among Ministers focused on global economic prospects and their implications for Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as on three issues of particular importance to the region. The first covered financial inclusion, where attention was placed on the specific problems faced by small and medium-sized enterprises, the main obstacles preventing broader access to finance, and various policy initiatives to close the financial gap. The second issue discussed was de-risking, referring to the process of withdrawal or reduction of correspondent banking relations by global banks in the region in recent years. The third issue was that of regional trade integration; specifically, a pragmatic policy proposal was brought forward, with the objective of filling the gaps in the coverage of regional trade preferences, unifying rules of origin in a system of fully extended cumulation, as well as improving trade logistics and facilitation, all leading to a region-wide free trade agreement.