4 Latin Presidents to Push for Andean Region Common Market

Four South American presidents agreed here Friday to join in a major new effort to create a regional common market.

The four presidents were in Cartagena for the 20th anniversary of the Andean Pact, an agreement on economic integration that was signed in Cartagena on May 26, 1969. So far, it has brought little progress toward the goal of a common market for Andean countries.

But the presidents--Virgilio Barco Vargas of Colombia, Rodrigo Borja Cevallos of Ecuador, Alan Garcia of Peru and Carlos Andres Perez of Venezuela--emphasized that their national economies must be integrated in order to develop.

“Andean integration is imperative for guaranteeing peace, security, improved living conditions and the full development of our peoples,” the presidents declared in a joint “manifesto” signed at the end of the summit. The document called for a series of measures to lower trade barriers and increase cooperation within the Andean group of nations.

In a separate document, the presidents commented on the political crisis in Panama, where the results of a presidential election apparently won by the opposition were annulled by the regime of military strongman Manuel A. Noriega. That development, they said, “not only assaults the sovereign will of (Panama’s) people but also affects regional stability and security.”

Outgoing President Victor Paz Estenssoro of Bolivia, the fifth member of the Andean Pact, sent his foreign minister to the meeting. It was the first Andean Pact summit meeting at which all the participants represented popularly elected governments.

Chile, ruled by Gen. Augusto Pinochet since 1973, was among the founding members but withdrew in 1976, after the group adopted rules restricting private foreign investment in the nations belonging to the pact.

The petroleum crisis of the 1970s, the international recession of the early 1980s and the current foreign debt crisis have battered South American economies and weakened integration efforts.

The combined foreign debt of the five member countries is about $76 billion, and about 40% of their export earnings goes to servicing their debts. As a result, money to import goods from one another is severely limited. Since 1980, exports by Andean Pact members to other members have declined from $916 million to $837 million.

But the presidents also blamed bureaucratic red tape, opposition by some private business groups, and a lack of political resolve for the pact’s failure to abolish trade barriers among its members.

President Garcia of Peru said in a speech at the opening session that business groups often fear competition from other member countries, preferring to defend “their little fiefdoms in the domestic market.”

President Barco of Colombia said at the same session that by joining the worldwide trend to create common markets like the European Economic Community, the Andean countries will have a better chance of sharing “the dividends of the international economy.”

“The Andean Group is truly an unfulfilled potential for progress,” Barco said, and this “imposes on us the responsibility of seeking strategies that will give it new life and meaning for the well-being of our peoples.”

President Borja of Ecuador said: “We cannot let the Andean Pact die. History would not forgive us.”