The First Ibero-American Meeting on Social and Solidarity Economy of AECID was held from September 8 to 12 in Santa Cruz de la Sierra (Bolivia). This international event brought together nearly 100 representatives from various institutions, international organizations, as well as civil society and academia from more than 19 countries. CIRIEC was represented by its Honorary President, José Luis Monzón Campos, and the President of the Ibero-American Observatory OIBESCOOP, Inmaculada Carrasco.
The meeting was promoted by the Ministry of Labor and Social Economy of the Government of Spain, together with the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), the Andalusian Agency for International Cooperation for Development (AACID), and the Andalusian School of Social Economy. Over the four days of the event, the current situation of the sector was analysed, and debates focused on how to promote a development model that helps to build more equitable, just, and sustainable societies wherever it is implemented.
The different sessions examined legal and financial frameworks in the region, statistical and impact measurement methodologies, work in territories, communities or gender issues, as well as the potential of the social economy model to address informality in labor markets.
The social economy in the system of national accounts
The Working Group on Statistics and Measurements on Social and Solidarity Economy adopted an important agreement on statistics, promoted by CIRIEC: “To request that the United Nations and its Statistics Division include a specific chapter on social and solidarity economy in the next revision of the SNA-2008, establishing the framework criteria for defining the scope of the social and solidarity economy and preparing a Satellite Accounts Manual on Social and Solidarity Economy, as well as the creation of a group of experts to delineate and identify the different actors of the social and solidarity economy.”
As is well known, there are two transnational systems of national accounts: the SNA-2008, used worldwide, and the ESA-2010, which is an adaptation of the SNA-2008 for the European Union. In neither of them is the social and solidarity economy visible, being diluted across the different institutional sectors of these systems. This absence poses a serious obstacle to the development of national statistics based on homogeneous criteria and standards that allow for both international and intertemporal comparative analyses.
Roadmap for the Future of the Ibero-American Social and Solidarity Economy
At the conclusion of this meeting, the “Roadmap for the Future of the Ibero-American Social and Solidarity Economy” was approved, defined as the starting point for a common agenda that can be presented in regional and international forums, as well as at the Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government to be hosted in Madrid next year.
