Since 1992, the FAL Bulletin of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has established itself as one of the leading regional sources of analysis on trade facilitation, transport, and logistics. For more than three decades, the publication has tracked the evolution of international trade and sectoral modernization processes, addressing strategic issues such as customs modernization, port development, maritime transport, logistics connectivity, and regional physical integration.
In this context, in 2025 ECLAC published the document “Better infrastructure for greater economic integration in Latin America and the Caribbean”The report, prepared by Sebastián Herreros and Miryam Saade Hazin, is 17 pages long and warns that, despite more than six decades of regional efforts, the region faces “a significant lag in economic integration.”
Progress and challenges in regional economic integration
That's relevant, because The analysis allows for the design and adjustment of more effective development policies. The document notes that, while progress has been made in liberalizing intraregional trade and building common regulatory frameworks, “structural barriers persist that continue to limit deeper, more competitive, and more effective integration.” Therefore, a new generation of development policies is needed to address these limitations.
The analysis examines the evolution of economic integration in Latin America and the Caribbean, with a particular focus on intraregional trade, physical connectivity, and transport and logistics infrastructure. It employs both historical and contemporary approaches.It identifies structural limitations, emerging opportunities, and recent experiences that could contribute to revitalizing the integration process.
Since the 1960s, regional integration has been a strategic objective for the region, initially driven by the structuralist vision of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), which promoted the expansion of national markets through regional integration to foster industrialization, take advantage of economies of scale, diversify exports, and reduce dependence on raw materials. These ideas gave rise to the first subregional integration schemes, such as the Central American Common Market and the Andean Pact, consolidating a fragmented model into different blocs that persists to this day.
Over time, The integration went through different stages: a first phase associated with state-led industrialization; then the open regionalism of the nineties, which conceived integration as a complement to global insertion; and subsequently a stage of regionalism with an expanded agenda, which incorporated issues such as services, digitalization, infrastructure and innovation.
However, despite advances in tariff liberalization and the construction of regional regulatory frameworks, intraregional trade "remains low and has shown a downward trend," reflecting structural limitations in productive complementarity and the depth of regional value chains.
This diagnosis takes on greater relevance in a global context characterized by geopolitical tensions, technological transformations, reconfiguration of supply chains, and climate challenges. Faced with this scenario, the document argues that the region must “rethink its integration strategy with pragmatism, a long-term vision, and renewed political will.”
ECLAC has consistently maintained that regional integration is key to boosting productive diversification, strengthening innovation, promoting productive transformation, and increasing the region's strategic autonomy. In this regard, greater development of intraregional trade would reduce external vulnerabilities and improve regional economic resilience.
However, significant structural obstacles persist, including institutional fragmentation, limited coordination of production policies, a lack of effective mechanisms to compensate for asymmetries between economies, and a strong dependence on national political cycles, which hinders the sustainability of long-term integration agendas. Furthermore, the relatively lower importance of regional trade compared to extra-regional markets reduces the economic incentives to deepen integration.
Infrastructure and connectivity: strategic pillars for integration
In this context, infrastructure emerges as a critical factor. The document warns that insufficient investment in transport, logistics, and digital connectivity infrastructure “has limited regional competitiveness, increased trade costs, and hindered the integration of production chains.” Furthermore, ECLAC emphasizes that the region not only requires greater investment, but also “high-quality, sustainable, resilient, and inclusive” infrastructure capable of facilitating internal mobility, reducing territorial inequalities, and improving access to essential services.
Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) are identified as a relevant tool for closing infrastructure gaps, especially when they are geared towards the Sustainable Development Goals, prioritizing universal access, fiscal and environmental sustainability, participatory governance and the replicability of projects.
Recent analyses also highlight the direct relationship between logistics infrastructure and food security, especially in vulnerable regions where port, storage and digital connectivity is key to ensuring supply and resilience to external crises.
In South America, initiatives such as the Brasilia Consensus and the South American Integration Routes project demonstrate a renewed drive toward physical, productive, and digital integration. These projects aim to develop transoceanic logistics corridors, promote multimodal transport, and strengthen regional value chains, with the goal of reducing logistics costs, improving connectivity between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, diminishing territorial inequalities, and consolidating sustainable, long-term regional integration.
Likewise, global trends such as nearshoring This could open up new opportunities for the region, especially if progress is made in developing regional value chains, digitizing trade, ensuring the interoperability of single windows, and establishing flexible cooperation schemes between countries.The exploitation of strategic natural resources —such as lithium, copper and critical minerals— also appears as an opportunity to promote productive integration with greater added value.
In summary, regional evidence indicates that the deepening of economic integration in Latin America and the Caribbean depends largely on strengthening the physical, logistical and digital infrastructure, as well as greater regional coordination. Progress on these fronts will be crucial to building more resilient, competitive, and inclusive economies, capable of facing the challenges of the international landscape and sustaining long-term productive development.
Source: ECLAC, Bulletin No. 409. Facilitation, Trade and Logistics in Latin America and the Caribbean.
(I.e.The document is attached for your review.https://www.cepal.org/es/publicaciones/82444-mejor-infraestructura-mayor-integracion-economica-america-latina-caribe
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