The Uruguay South Initiative at the UNIDO Regional Conference in Montevideo 2026

In July 2026, the Uruguay South Initiative took part in the UNIDO Regional Conference for Latin America and the Caribbean, held in Montevideo as part of Industry Week, organised by Uruguay’s Ministry of Industry, Energy and Mining. During the plenary session Industrial Policy for Future-Ready Industries, the initiative shared a perspective on industrial policy, the green transition and productive development rooted in Latin America and the Caribbean.

As part of Industry Week, organised by Uruguay’s Ministry of Industry, Energy and Mining, the UNIDO Regional Conference for Latin America and the Caribbean was held in Montevideo on 15 and 16 July 2026. One of the main sessions was Industrial Policy for Future-Ready Industries, which focused on the role of industrial policy in the face of the technological, productive, environmental and geopolitical changes shaping the region.

Uruguay’s Minister of Industry, Energy and Mining, Fernanda Cardona, called for a collective vision to advance towards sustainable, inclusive and long-term industrialisation. She placed this discussion in a context marked by technological acceleration, the reorganisation of value chains, energy security and sustainability as a condition for competitiveness.

Drawing on Uruguay’s experience, she noted that industrial policy is once again playing a strategic role in planning productive development, guiding capabilities, adding value and creating quality employment. She also highlighted some of the country’s strengths in this agenda: a mostly renewable electricity matrix, telecommunications infrastructure, state-owned enterprises with strategic capabilities, and a decentralised system of education and knowledge generation.

Regional cooperation was a central part of her remarks. Cardona emphasised the need to turn the region’s capabilities and resources into shared medium- and long-term strategies, incorporating technology, knowledge, financing and instruments that can strengthen industrial development.

UNIDO, for its part, brought a perspective focused on the implementation challenges of industrial policy in Latin America and the Caribbean. In this context, UNIDO Director General Gerd Müller presented the Regional Programme for Latin America and the Caribbean 2026–2030, structured around six areas of work: industrial policy and competitiveness, artificial intelligence, agro-industrial value chains, mineral resource processing, circular economy and decarbonisation, and support for small island developing States.

The exchange focused on a question shared across the region: how to move from policy design to implementation. The discussion identified financing, technical capabilities and interministerial coordination as some of the main challenges for advancing sustained processes of productive transformation.

The contributions from representatives of different Latin American and Caribbean governments pointed in a similar direction: the need to add value to traditional exports, strengthen quality infrastructure, incorporate artificial intelligence and sustainability into productive strategies, and reduce dependence on extractive sectors or low value-added commodities.

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Daniel Schteingart, Director of Sustainable Productive Development at Fundar and member of the Uruguay South Initiative, opened the panel with a presentation on the opportunities and risks posed by the return of industrial policy in Latin America and the Caribbean.

He noted that the ecological transition, artificial intelligence and the security of supply chains require investment, coordination and risk-reduction mechanisms that are unlikely to emerge spontaneously. For this reason, he explained, governments in different regions have once again turned to industrial policy tools such as subsidies, directed credit, public procurement, regulations and incentives for strategic activities.

Schteingart argued that Latin America and the Caribbean has especially favourable conditions for this new stage. The region has critical minerals, renewable resources, biomass, fertile land and biodiversity, as well as industrial, scientific and technological capabilities built over decades. This is reinforced by a significant geopolitical advantage: in an international context marked by conflicts and disputes over supply, the region remains a zone of peace.

However, he warned that these strengths do not, on their own, guarantee a development path. One of the main risks is that the green transition could move forward without changing the region’s position in global value chains, with countries exporting natural resources without developing value chains, importing technologies, or depending on standards and methodologies defined outside Latin America.

Against this backdrop, he framed the Uruguay South Initiative as a space to produce ideas, foster cooperation and think about productive transformation from the conditions and priorities of the Global South. In this sense, he proposed assessing industrial policies not only by the investments they mobilise, but by the capabilities they leave behind: firms that learn, workers who acquire new skills, local suppliers, stronger institutions and knowledge capable of sustaining new stages of development.

He also underlined the importance of building situated strategies. International experiences offer valuable lessons, but opportunities and constraints are not the same for all countries. A policy that is appropriate for a large economy may not be viable for a smaller country, with a different productive scale and different state capacities.

Drawing on findings from the Green Transitions project developed by Fundar, he also noted that countries in the Global South are not passive actors in the transition. They regulate, negotiate standards and develop industrial policy instruments, although outcomes depend on accumulated capabilities to produce information, develop traceability systems, generate their own knowledge and participate in defining the rules of trade and sustainability.

On critical minerals and renewable energy, he argued that the challenge is not only to take advantage of available resources, but to identify the segments of value chains where each country can build its own capabilities, incorporate knowledge and generate greater productive autonomy.

Finally, he introduced the concept of green industrial policy space: the effective room governments have to promote strategies for productive transformation. This space depends on factors such as macroeconomic stability, state capacities, access to financing, trade agreements and each country’s political economy.

In this context, regional cooperation emerges as a way to expand that room for action. Sharing capabilities, coordinating policies and building common instruments make it possible to address challenges that are difficult to solve in isolation. From this perspective, the Uruguay South Initiative and UNIDO’s Regional Programme offer concrete spaces to strengthen decision-making capacity and cooperation among countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The Uruguay South Initiative’s participation in the UNIDO Regional Conference reaffirmed the importance of looking at the green transition through the capabilities it can leave behind in countries and territories. Rather than seeing it only as a process of decarbonisation, the transition can also become an opportunity to strengthen firms, workers, institutions, knowledge and productive autonomy. From this perspective, regional cooperation is not merely a complement, but a condition for expanding green industrial policy space and building development strategies from Latin America and the Caribbean.