On 10th of June, I had the opportunity to participate to the 30th edition of the Conference of Montreal, the Economic Forum of the Americas.
Organized by Canada (the 10th largest economy in the world, with a nominal dimension of over USD 2.1 trillion dollars in 2023) the conference of 2024 focused on the persistence of the unprecedented global challenges in the post-Second World War period, with impact for the investment climate in the short-run and consequences for the potential growth pace of the real economy in the mid-run.
Top Speakers from the real side of the economy, but also from the financial side of the economy (including the Minister of Small Companies of Canada, the President of the Treasury of Canada, the Major of Montreal, the President of the Power Corporation Canada, the Vice-Presidents of Morning star and Franklin Templeton and the CEOs of Airbus Canada, Promutuel Insurance and the Federation of Chambers of Commerce of Quebec) pointed out the current challenges and opportunities, including the profound and fast changes, within an approach from world, to regional and local.
On the one hand, the debates underlined the gap between the rhetoric and the deeds (the implementation of the political message), which contributes to the prolongation of the period of multi-crises and to the escalation of the political extremism, with negative impact for the confidence of the economic agents.
In this context, the public speech should be modified, while the public policies should be well debated with the stakeholders before their implementation.
Furthermore, promoting the multilateralism seems more important than ever nowadays, as the cooperation among the main economies of the world is the most suitable way to address the unprecedented global challenges, including the mitigation of the climate change and the implementation of the technological progress.
The complicated and tensioned global geopolitical context brings on the frontline the saying that the countries that are trade partners are not interested to be involved in military confrontation.
At present, the world economy is crossing the Era of Great Transformations, and the climate change open the list of priorities in terms of economic policies, either in the developed countries, or in the emerging and developing economies.
Given the unprecedented existential threat (the mid-run high level of the economic costs associated to the climate change) the way to be followed in the future is economy and environment (the two dimensions cannot be separated anymore).
In other words, there must be avoided economic policies that support the economic growth pace in the short-run, but with dramatic consequences in the mid-run for the environment.
At the same time, the technological progress (the Digital Revolution and the Artificial Intelligence Revolution) has a strong and decisive contribution to the improvement of the efficiency of the businesses and also to the acceleration of transition towards digital economy, but its implementation is accompanied by challenges.
Therefore, within the Conference of Montreal 2024 there was underlined the importance of adopting a strategy for the implementation of the fruits of these revolutions, in order to assess the impact and to implement in a responsible and rationale manner.
Furthermore, the participants to the Economic Forum of the Americas emphasized the structural changes in terms of demography (with unfavourable consequences for the dynamics of the demand in the mid-run in the developed countries, which are confronted with the decline of the natality and the aging of population), and also the total confrontation among the economies of the world to attract and retain the talents, with prospects to intensify in the coming years.
The talent makes the difference among the companies and countries and has a decisive contribution to the dynamics of innovation and to the continuity of the positive trends in terms of technological progress.
In this context, the investments in research and development are more important than ever and the policymakers should amplify the efforts to generate the future talents, while work from home and the artificial intelligence increase the flexibility on the labour markets.
Last, but not least, the debates also focused on the sustainability of the production and supply chains and on the cybersecurity, very important topics in the geoeconomics era.
The recommendations issued within the Economic Forum of the Americas 2024 were pro-active strategies, with focus on supply chains (taking into account the sustainability-regulation relation) and the implementation of the new technologies in a sustainable manner, which contributes to the increase of consistency and resilience in the context of the multiple cyber threats.