Fourth meeting of the Mesoamerica Project Executive Committee in 2023

Fourth meeting of the Mesoamerica Project Executive Committee in 2023

• Amexcid participates for Mexico as Permanent President, and Colombia as outgoing President Pro Tempore.
• The ten member countries of the Mesoamerica Integration and Development Project met in person to address regional programs and projects that benefit the 230 million inhabitants of the region.

Gloria Sandoval Salas, Executive Director of the Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation (Amexcid), and Mexico's presidential commissioner to the Mesoamerica Project (MP), and Elizabeth Taylor Jay, Colombia's presidential commissioner and President Pro Tempore (PPT), together with the newly elected Executive Director of the Mesoamerica Project, Roberto Carlos Salazar Figueroa, led the meeting.

Also participating were the presidential commissioners and representatives of the nine additional member countries of the MP: Belize, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama, and the partners of the Inter-institutional Technical Group (GTI).

This was the first meeting attended by the current executive director, who arrives at a time when the MP is undergoing a transformation. As a result, the current Executive Committee has a longer term, which allows for strategic issues to be reviewed and for the presidential commissioners to reflect on the project.

Gloria Sandoval, Mexico's presidential commissioner, highlighted the importance of renewing alliances with GTI partners and promoting strategic dialogues to identify priority issues that strengthen cooperation.

The meeting addressed the Mesoamerica Project's progress with its nine lines of action; reviewed the 2023 budget and approved the planning for 2024. The GTI members presented their work with the MP.

Colombia was thanked for its commitment and valuable contributions as President Pro Tempore in the second half of 2023, and the PPT was handed over to the Dominican Republic, which will assume the joint presidency with Mexico in the first half of 2024.

Mesoamerica Project

The Mesoamerica Project is the Mesoamerica integration and development program that enhances complementarity and cooperation between Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and Panama in order to expand and improve their capabilities and launch projects that lead to concrete benefits for our societies in terms of infrastructure, interconnectivity and social development.

The MP operates with a joint presidency, with Mexico as permanent president and a semiannual president pro tempore that rotates among the other countries. It focuses on making significant progress with the Mesoamerican Cooperation Agenda, in areas such as regional political leadership, cooperation, and communications by developing programs and projects in the sectors of health, environment, comprehensive risk management, housing, food and nutritional security, transportation, trade facilitation and competitiveness, energy and telecommunications, through two lines of work: social and economic.

For more information about the MP, see: www.proyectomesoamerica.org.