Alex Mejia, president and executive director of CIFAL Atlanta. Photo by Nema Etheridge.

The U.S. Department of Commerce will host the Americas Competitiveness Forum in Atlanta for the second year in a row to take advantage of the city’s status as a logistics center in the region and build on the successes of the original forum last June.

David Constant, international affairs program manager in the Mayor’s office, told GlobalAtlanta that the Commerce Department confirmed the decision Dec. 10.

The competitiveness forum is to bring together academic, business and government leaders from across the Western Hemisphere in a high-level dialogue on economic issues with the goal of establishing a “road map to reducing poverty” in the Americas, Alex Mejia, president and executive director of CIFAL Atlanta, said.

CIFAL, which is chaired by Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, is a joint initiative of the United Nations and the City of Atlanta dedicated to working with government officials to promote economic development in Western Hemisphere countries, was influential in drawing the first forum to the Georgia capital.

The June conference included panel discussions by the heads of many corporations and university representatives as well as the vice presidents of El Salvador and Nicaragua, the U.S. ambassadors to Argentina and Honduras, the U.S. secretaries of commerce, education and the treasury and government officials from at least 16 countries.

Mr. Mejia credited those discussions with inspiring legislation in several countries designed to increase trade.  He added that at least seven heads of state, including President Bush, are to be invited to next year’s forum.

CIFAL is to play a larger role in organizing the upcoming forum, which Mr. Mejia hopes will make Atlanta “the center of attention for the Western Hemisphere” during the forum, tentatively scheduled for Aug. 17-19.

The upcoming discussions will continue to focus on the overall competitiveness of the Americas in the global economy, supply chain management and education with a special emphasis on Latin America and the Caribbean, as opposed to last year’s U.S. focus, Mr. Mejia said.

He added that the U.S. government is offering funding to cover the travel and registration expenses of businesspeople in small- and medium-sized enterprises interested in attending the conference.

The forum’s organizers recognize large corporations as having the greatest capacity to create jobs but hope through the new program that “not only people with money and influence and resources and power will come, but hopefully small- and medium-sector businesses,” Mr. Mejia said.

He added that Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez chose Atlanta to host this forum over cities in Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Uruguay due to the ability of Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines Inc. to transport the more than 1,000 delegates from 34 countries expected to attend.

U.S. ambassadors in each Western Hemisphere country will receive instructions next week to begin forming delegations to attend the forum, Mr. Mejia said.

The timing “couldn’t be better” for Atlanta to host the forum, as Delta began opening more flights to South America and the Caribbean two years ago, according to Mr. Mejia.

The idea for a Pan-American forum on increasing the hemisphere’s role in the global economy followed President Bush’s participation in the Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentina, in November 2005, where he advocated methods of increasing job creation, poverty reduction and democracy in the hemisphere, according to Mr. Gutierrez’s remarks last June.

Correction: GlobalAtlanta recently ran a story reporting that the second Americas Competitiveness Forum would be held in Uruguay. An innovation forum that is to build upon the methods and successes of the Atlanta forum last June will be held in Uruguay in March or April.