TRADE-LATAM:
Technology Provides a Boost for Small Businesses

Humberto Márquez


CARACAS, (IPS) - The Costa Rican web portal Lacarretica.com was recently presented to Venezuelan exporters as an example of the way that new information and communications technology (ICT) can help to expand the range of goods offered for export by the countries of the region.

The presentation took place during a seminar held at the Caracas headquarters of the Latin American Economic System (SELA).

Leopoldo Rojas, from the Costa Rican IT firm Galileo, told IPS that the portal was ”an initiative of a group of young entrepreneurs in Costa Rica, who use the Internet to sell typically Costa Rican products to the 100,000 Costa Ricans living in the United States.”

The products sold by Lacarretica.com range from food and drinks -- like ”lizana” sauce, used in a wide variety of Costa Rican dishes -- to national soccer team jerseys, traditional Costa Rican music CDs, toys, books, newspapers, posters and even religious paraphernalia.

Sales currently total between 11,000 and 12,000 dollars a month, and the portal's success has led to the development of similar ventures in the neighbouring Central American countries of El Salvador and Guatemala, under the name Mejorescompras.com, said Rojas.

The Venezuelan Exporters Association, made up of roughly 300 companies, and the private institution Venezuela Competitiva joined with SELA to reflect on the need to incorporate new information and communications technology as a means of seeking out markets for small and medium-sized businesses.

Making use of this new technology ”is crucial for all businesses in Latin America and the Caribbean, and especially for small and medium-sized businesses, in order to diversify exports,” trade specialist Gonzalo Capriles told IPS.

There is also ”an urgent need for our countries to move beyond dependence on a single export commodity, and to take fuller advantage of new trends in the global economy,” said Capriles, who directs a SELA-sponsored Ibero-American programme for small and medium-sized businesses.

Small and medium-sized companies represent 96 percent of the region's private enterprise as a whole. Internationally, the average annual rate of growth for businesses of this scale is around nine percent, as compared to four or five percent for large corporations and consortiums, according to Francisco Thierman, the South American sales director for U.S. computer giant IBM.

”The word 'growth' has come back into fashion,” Thierman declared at the seminar. ”Before people only talked about efficiency, but now they are talking about growth again.”

”There are going to be some major new changes in the coming years, and businesses have to be prepared,” he added.

Isidro Lazo, a Spanish academic and advisor to the European Union, said that one of the newest trends in Europe is ”collaborative trade”, in which enterprises associated with the different stages of the production chain are linked together electronically. ”Innovation is the key word,” he said.

Similar views were expressed at a virtual forum on the exporting capacity of the region's small and medium-sized businesses organised in June by the Latin American Integration Association (ALADI). Ventures of this size can become more competitive if they join together in networks, allowing for greater access to information, reduced costs, and the ability to participate in every stage of the production process.

Capriles highlighted the example of the network formed by small and medium-sized businesses in Argentina. ”For five years, they have been working together to establish joint export associations in areas where none of them would have been able to reach the international market alone.”

ALADI stressed that the ability of small and medium-sized ventures to compete will depend on their capacity to assimilate new communications technologies and ”adapt to changing contemporary conditions.”

For Capriles, ”awareness-raising and training should begin at the management level and then extend to workers, not to eliminate or reduce jobs, but rather to create new, technology-based forms of employment.”

Francisco Mendoza, president of the Venezuelan Exporters Association, also emphasised that ”the introduction of new technology should not imply fewer but rather different jobs, like those for information architects and design engineers.”

”This is the trend in today's economy, and innovation can be used as a tool to achieve greater added value for our products,” Mendoza told IPS.

Another conclusion reached at the SELA forum, and also stressed by ALADI, was the need for governments to develop policies and initiatives that promote the incorporation of ICT in export-related businesses, particularly those of small or medium size.

In the case of Venezuela, said Mendoza, even the ups and downs experienced by non-traditional exports reflect the sector's potential, ”but we need consistent policies that don't change from one government to the next, or even from one minister to another, as we have seen here.”

Venezuelan non-traditional export earnings totalled 5.3 billion dollars in 2003, but had reached 6.9 billion the previous year.