Business Climate for Competitiveness in the Americas: Simplification of Procedures to Promote Competitiveness

International organizations most often recommend a virtual one stop shop such as the Single Window for Foreign Trade (Spanish acronym: VUCE). This model is undoubtedly the most successful scheme available. This paper presents the general framework for trade facilitation and shows how VUCEs have triggered a new perspective of cohesiveness as countries seek to facilitate trade and influence competitiveness indexes. In addition, it assesses the current situation in countries of the Americas that are starting to or have already taken the first steps in developing a VUCE, such as Costa Rica, Colombia, Mexico, and Chile, and discusses the conditions required to implement a VUCE with the understanding that there is more than one possible model of implementation and every government must choose one that is suitable to its own institutional structure and technological progress. This paper was presented at the Fifth Americas Competiveness Forum for the Inter-American Development Bank and Compete Caribbean Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, October 5-7, 2011.