The Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Alicia Bárcena, met on Thursday 20 in Lima with Peruvian government ministers to discuss the main points of the position paper that will be presented during the regional organization’s next session, scheduled for May 5-9 in that same city, and to fine-tune preparations for the meeting.

ECLAC’s Executive Secretary held a meeting with Peruvian Foreign Affairs Minister Eda Rivas. This was their second meeting this year in Lima -the first one was January 17- to finalize the planning for the thirty-fifth session, the most important meeting held, every two years, by this regional United Nations organization.

The United Nations senior official also met with the Minister of Development and Social Inclusion Paola Bustamante, Production Minister Piero Ghezzi and Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar.

Alicia Bárcena also had an informative dialogue with the diplomatic heads of mission from ECLAC’s member states who are accredited in Peru. The organization’s 44 member states and 12 associate members are invited to the session to analyze the main challenges to economic and social development in Latin America and the Caribbean.

As at every session, ECLAC will unveil a new position paper in Lima. It will expand on themes seen in the last two reports, presented in Brasilia in 2010 and San Salvador in 2012, which were centered on equality as the basis for achieving greater well-being for the people of the region.

In these documents, ECLAC sustained that while equality is necessary for growth, growth is also necessary for improving equality, and to achieve this, a new state-market-society balance is essential. In addition, the Commission said that macroeconomic, industrial and social policies must be coordinated to achieve growth with equality and with environmental sustainability.