Six or eight
years ago the private sector got together with the public sector
and they decided to change the trade law in Ecuador to give the
private sector more participation in policy-making and trade
promotion. The law created a Consejo de Comercío Exterior
(Foreign Trade Council) to make policy with five representatives
from the public sector and four from the private sector – and
also created CORPEI, which is a private, non-profit institution
that promotes exports and investment. In the Board of Directors
of CORPEI there are four representatives of the State and nine
members of the private sector with a voice and vote. The eight
most important export sectors are also represented, with a voice
but no vote. So far no majority vote decisions have been taken.
Everything has been by consensus. The other thing that is
different from other typical TPOs is the way that that CORPEI is
funded. The law created a redeemable contribution – whatever
we get now we have to pay back in 10 years at no interest –
1.5 per thousand dollars of the FOB value of private exports,
0.5 per thousand of all petroleum exports, private and public,
and 0.25 per thousand of all public and private imports.
That gives us about US$ 5.8 million a year, but we have to
set aside 36% of that money and put it in a fund which at 8.87%
will yield what we have to give back in 10 years. So actually we
can only work with 64% of our income.
What has CORPEI done over the past four years?
Estrada: We maintain an information centre that spends
about US$ 100,000 to maintain updated information . We are
trying to become the expert institution in Ecuador to provide
information services. We do not want to have all the information
in our data banks but we would like to know where that
information is available, whether in the country or via
Internet. So we operate joint ventures with other institutions
in the country so that none of us buy the same information and
whatever we have we will make it available to each other.
We have worked on three big trade missions, one led by the
Vice-President of Ecuador, who is now President, to Peru, which
took about 120 entrepreneurs, five Ministers, ten of the best
development institutions, three months after we signed the peace
agreement with Peru, to consolidate that peace via trade.
Then we had another mission to Chile, led by the President,
with 60 exporters and five Ministers and five Presidents of
Chambers. Finally, there was a mission to Venezuela with 50
entrepreneurs presided by the Minister of Trade: we managed to
promote business for about US$ 16 million, which is equivalent
to an increase of 16% to that market, in one year.
We also have an external trade network, which is made out of
a joint venture between CORPEI and the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, by which we can place five of our own people within
embassies with diplomatic status but reporting directly to us,
and 11 services provided by people from the embassy in 11
markets of our interest, but answering operationally to CORPEI.
So we can say we have 16 offices around the world as a result of
this joint venture.
From your experience you have developed some principles of
best practice for export promotion, what are those?
Estrada: One of them would be this joint venture system I
just mentioned between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and
CORPEI because external trade networks are very expensive. We
are making the best use of scarce resources – economic and
human – that the country has. Then also there's the way we
handle the trade missions, having the President or Vice
President preside over them, and having the participation of
Ministers, and important representatives of the private sector,
accompany the entrepreneurs that will have business meetings
with local counterparts, which gives an important added value to
those entrepreneurs. We also facilitate the participation in
international trade shows, as part of a country stand, of
several companies. CORPEI co-ordinates the participation and
gives the support for the duration of the fair.
And the best practice would include a commercial information
centre?
Estrada: Yes, as I said before, it is very important that
we try to complement the information that we buy with the market
intelligence that we get out of the external trade network and
make that available to exporters. We also bring in people from
the trade network – one a month – and hold seminars on
business opportunities in those countries so that we can build
up interest in those markets to reach our goals to diversify our
exporters, diversify markets and diversify products.
Unfortunately Ecuador has a very big concentration of exports on
a few markets: 80% of the exports are made of only a few
products, and those products are exported by very few companies.
So we need to create a bigger exporter base.
What characterizes the Ecuador trade promotion effort is the
high interaction between the public and private sector at all
levels...
Estrada: CORPEI, I think, is a good example of how the
public and private sector should work together: all our
decisions are unanimous. The public sector requested CORPEI to
work on the national export promotion plan and the COMEXI turned
it into a law. You could say that the public sector has the
tools but the private sector has the drive. We are also working
very closely with the Minister of Trade, who has entrusted us
with the management of a very important loan from the World Bank
– a matching grant scheme by which an exporter covers 50% of a
project and the government gives a non-refundable credit of up
to US$ 50,000. That has proved a very successful scheme. We have
managed to create 3,000 new jobs directly out of that programme:
36% of the people who benefited became new exporters. We have
now helped 600 exporters though we were only supposed to reach
500.
Before we started with the programme, there were only 30
companies with ISO certification. Now we have 90.
We also have good relations between CORPEI and several
international institutions. One of them, of course, is ITC.
Others are UNCTAD, UNIDO, CBI from the European Union and the
World Bank.
What collaboration is there with ITC?
Estrada: We became partners in producing in Spanish the
ITC manual Secrets of Electronic Commerce that was
launched a few days before I came to Montreux. We had three
technical presentations. We had several service providers from
Ecuador present. We had 120 people in the room. We will do the
second launching in Quito when I get back to Ecuador, but to us
it was very important because that is an excellent tool for
trade promotion and investment promotion. The book really makes
it easy for people that does not know much about the subject. It
is user-friendly and it compiles the best practices so far in
that field
We also took part in the world meeting of trade promotion
organizations which is supported by ITC. We participate in the
ITC world forums: these are very useful to talk about best
practices and exchange different points of view. Nobody tries to
push what they do as a best practice but you can learn from what
everybody else is doing and see what applies to your country.
It's a two-way street. We feel that we can contribute but we can
benefit
