Effectiveness and Pertinence of Public-Private Partnerships to Promote Regional Competitiveness at the Level of Value Chain: The Case of Colombia

Abstract

During the 1990s, the changing nature of industrial policy, the endogenous development needs, and the devastating outcomes of the economic restructuring on several regions and key sectors, such as agriculture and livestock, prompted countries such as Colombia to undertake an aggressive programme of value chain (VC)-based development policies and partnerships, including decentralization to the regions. The agreements on competitiveness (CA) for several value chains at the regional level became a proactive response at the meso-level to the new challenges that firms and nations faced in the context of globalization. Likewise, these agreements embodied a recognition that a systemic approach towards competitiveness was needed in countries that were planning a successful restructuring of their economies while promoting the international competitiveness of their firms. These policy undertakings lacked an adequate theoretical underpinning to leverage them; hence, despite sufficient empirical evidence, there is not much theory around them. Therefore, although Colombia’s competitive policy is a pioneering case in Latin America of decentralized implementation (to sector and region) of a national competitiveness policy — it is highly innovative — its policy process effectiveness has not been studied. Ganeshan Wignaraja acknowledges that there are a great many empirical studies on competitiveness strategy, yet he questions the theoretical foundations of many of them, as well as their empirical bases, which he regards as often being weak.