• The initiative was financed by the PA Cooperation Fund, and executed by the Undersecretariat of Fisheries and Aquaculture of Chile, through the Universidad de Concepción and the Future of Fish Foundation.

The coronavirus directly affected the economic activities of all sectors worldwide. The Pacific Alliance (PA) countries were no exception. It is in this context that the project “Promoting the marketing and consumption of artisanal fishery and aquaculture products in the Pacific Alliance, in order to contribute to mitigating the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic” was born.

The initiative, financed by the PA Cooperation Fund, and developed during 7 months, ended with an online workshop to share the results, strengths and difficulties of the process, and the experiences on the measures taken in each country to face and mitigate the effects of the pandemic.

Juan Fernando Cifuentes Restrepo, from Colombia Productiva and current Coordinator of the Technical Group on Fisheries and Aquaculture (GTPA) of the PA, indicated that this project was born within the framework of the work plan of this instance and that “it is the materialization of its lines of work, of course, since it has counted on the work and commitment and the contribution of the experience of different actors from the four member countries, whom I thank for all their effort and the time dedicated to this initiative”.

He also reflected on the importance of implementing this type of initiative, and that hopefully this is the first step of many, “since with interventions as relevant as this one, and I say relevant because it seeks to favor and support men and women engaged in artisanal fishing and aquaculture, strengthening their productive and commercial skills and generating new capacities, which results in the generation of higher income and, of course, positive effects on their living conditions,” he said.
Julio Jorquera Guerrero, technical manager and member of the International Affairs Unit of Chile’s Undersecretariat of Fisheries and Aquaculture, Subpesca, said that the value of this project was to bring together virtually men and women from the four PA countries who live around artisanal fishing and aquaculture.

“During the course of the execution, common gaps became evident, among them, low digitalization and connectivity, as well as associativity. The interest of users in exporting, as well as in training in food safety and marketing, was also evident. It is these sectoral needs that set the tone for what we must continue to work on as PA,” he said.

The Subpesca professional also noted that “it is important to give value to the products developed in this project, such as the Women’s Network booklet, the strategy to increase consumption and the COVID learning process. These documents provide guidelines to the four countries (public and private entities), as well as to the GTPA, on how to strengthen the marketing and consumption of the products.

Sandra Ferrada Fuentes, a researcher at the Universidad de Concepción, Chile, and coordinator of the executing team, said that it was a challenging task in which “networking and international collaboration were essential. We exchanged knowledge and experiences with the GTPA focal points, which allowed us to have a great representativeness and geographical coverage, broadening our perspective and approach”.

Finally, she thanked all the representatives for their willingness and commented that, although the challenges faced by artisanal fisheries and aquaculture are many and complex, “they require the collaboration of governments, industry, local communities and international organizations to find sustainable solutions. The joint work of the Pacific Alliance’s GTPA is a step in the right direction to address them effectively”.

All the material generated during the implementation of the initiative, such as informative documents, webinars, videos of the member countries, will be available on the PA website, specifically in the section corresponding to the Fisheries and Aquaculture Technical Group.

The initiative was financed by the Pacific Alliance Cooperation Fund. For its materialization, a resource transfer agreement for USD 105,900 was signed between the Chilean Agency for International Cooperation and the Undersecretariat of Fisheries and Aquaculture of the Government of Chile, the latter being responsible for the execution of the project, through the Universidad de Concepción de Chile and the Future of Fish Foundation.

Review the final meeting of the initiative “Results dissemination workshop”.

• A space to learn about the best of the sustainable tourism offerings of Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, identify synergies and establish strategic alliances.

September 4, 2023.- Within the framework of the Tourism Cooperation Agreement of the Pacific Alliance, the entities responsible for the promotion of international tourism of the four countries – National Tourism Service of Chile (SERNATUR), PROCOLOMBIA, Secretariat of Tourism of Mexico (SECTUR), and PROMPERÚ – on August 17, 2023, the 1st Sustainable Tourism Business Meeting of the Pacific Alliance ended.

On August 9, the 1st Sustainable Tourism Business Meeting of the Pacific Alliance was inaugurated with words from Claricia Tirado, director of Tourism Promotion of PROMPERU, in her capacity as pro tempore presidency of the Pacific Alliance, where she indicated that: “for the Pacific Alliance, tourism is a very important sector due to its great relevance in the development of the countries and its significant influence, directly and indirectly, in the lives of millions of people in the world. To speak of tourism is to mention its great potential for economic growth, due to its capacity to generate employment and its compatibility with nature, the environment, and its social surroundings”. During the inauguration, the final video of the joint Promotion Campaign was also launched, published on the Pacific Alliance YouTube channel (https://youtu.be/neSwloXaoFc), which was presented by PROMPERU’s Director of Tourism Promotion: “… this video invites us to travel, to discover and fall in love with an Alliance full of magic, biodiversity, adventure, customs, gastronomy and traditions of tailor-made experiences”.

This was followed by the Academic Agenda, where Vicente Ferreyra Acosta, Vice President of Sustainable Tourism of the Sustainable & Social Tourism Summit (SSTS) gave a keynote speech entitled “Sustainable and Regenerative Tourism, an opportunity for regional development”, which was attended by more than 130 people, including outbound and inbound businessmen, experts and the general public, in which Vicente Ferreyra emphasized: “We have learned that without sustainability and regeneration it will be difficult for us to have a desirable future and without a future there is no tourism, so we have a very important responsibility, we have an open opportunity to enhance these aspects in a much better way, together as an alliance with common markets, with common positions, which I invite you to reflect on and move forward together. And we also have a very interesting opportunity to develop business, to develop products, to develop promotion with a focus on these issues, which in reality is little done but as an alliance we could position ourselves in that sense.”

The day ended with Fernando Mandri, president of the Sustainable & Social Tourism Summit, where 20 inbound tourism companies from Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru were trained in the construction of their value proposition in terms of sustainability through the preparation of their Business Pitch; this space allowed entrepreneurs to improve the sales pitch of their products with a high sustainable impact, which will enable them to generate more effective business meetings that will result in closing business deals for our entrepreneurs and beyond that, that together – Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, we contribute to one of the priorities of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of our countries.

The activities continued on August 16, where 19 inbound companies from the 4 countries that make up the Pacific Alliance, presented their value proposition to experts and outbound entrepreneurs, in a novel activity of pitch sessions where they received comments from the panel of experts in sustainable tourism; Beatriz Román Alzerreca, deputy director of Development of the National Tourism Service of Chile; Laura Durana Posada, who heads the Colombian Association of Responsible Tourism – ACOTUR; Sergio Rodríguez Abitia, president for the Americas of the International Social Tourism Organization (ISTO Americas, Canada), advisory councilor to both the Conservatory of Gastronomic Culture of Mexico and the Association of Food and Regional Cuisines of the Americas (Argentina) and vice president for Social Tourism of the Sustainable & Social Tourism Summit and the Ibero-American Summit on Accessible Tourism; and Francisco Basili, president of the Peruvian Association of Adventure, Ecotourism and Specialized Tourism (APTAE). In addition, in this space, about 20 outbound businessmen participating in the event made their requests for meetings according to their interest in the proposals presented through the pitches for the day of August 17.

In the last stage of the Meeting, 1-on-1 meetings were held between the outbound and inbound businessmen who participated in the pitch sessions the day before. These meetings were held in parallel in 9 sessions of 25 minutes each, where 80% of the scheduled and accepted appointments were made, highlighting that 89% of the companies that participated were meeting for the first time with the buyers present at the event, according to the results of surveys to outbound businessmen. Some of the appointments did not materialize because, at the time they were made, there was a strong earthquake in the city of Bogota, Colombia, so the companies involved were contacted to reschedule the appointments and maintain the business relationship. It should be noted that, according to the responses to the surveys after the networking session, the main products of interest were Vacation, focused on Culture, Gastronomy, History, Archeology, Nature and Adventure in the destinations of Chile, Colombia, Peru and Mexico.

June 21, 2024.- The “Investment Promotion Seminar on the Pacific Alliance Markets”, organized by the Seoul Office of UNIDO ITPO (United Nations Industrial Development Organization – Investment & Technology Promotion Office) and the embassies of the Pacific Alliance (PA) countries in the Republic of Korea -Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru- was held on June 19. This took place within the framework of the “Smart Tech Korea” fair.

The seminar, inaugurated by the Chilean Ambassador to Korea, Mathias Francke, representing the current pro tempore presidency of the Pacific Alliance, was attended by people interested in learning about the ecosystem for entrepreneurship and start-ups in the PA countries.

A representative from each country gave a presentation on the topic with a focus on start-ups, with the objective of providing a space for interaction between Korean ventures and diplomatic missions, as well as presenting public policies on the subject in each of the countries.

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