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Monday, April 13, 1998
Presenters:
Shahid Javed Burki
Guillermo Perry
Donald Winkler
Contents:
Introduction: Mr. Burki
Questions from the Press
PROCEEDINGS
MR. BURKI: Maybe we could start. Sorry to be a little late.
VOICE: We can start with questions if you want.
[Laughter.]
MR. BURKI: No, give me 5 minutes to introduce the subject, and then, we can certainly handle--we can certainly start with the questions.
I just want to make a couple of preliminary comments. The first one is that this is the first time the World Bank will be attending, on a formal basis, the Summit of the Americas. Mr. Wolfensohn will head the team, and it will be made up of myself and Guillermo Perry.
As you know, there are four subjects to be covered in the summit: education, poverty reduction, strengthening democracy, justice and human rights and economic integration/free trade. We have already been involved quite actively in the presummit process. We have been working with a number of functionaries who have been preparing for the summit. We have played an active role in a couple of areas. Education is one of them.
In education, as you know, the expectation is that the summit will endorse a plan of action which would aim at improving both the quantity of education and the quality of education. At this point, something like 86 to 90 percent of the youngsters are in school, are in primary schools, and it is hoped that 100 percent coverage can be provided to the primary schoolgoing age children.
The main problem, as we see it, in the education of Latin America is not so much the coverage but the quality of education. The Latin American governments spend a significant proportion of their GDP on education. In fact, if you compare the factors of Latin America with East Asia, you will find that there is not too much of a difference. If anything, Latin America spends a tad more on education than the countries of East Asia, but it is the quality that is not very high, and that is not very high because of the problem with the quality of teachers, the textbooks that are used, the amount of time that is spent by the students in schools.
So, those are the sorts of issues that will be addressed in the plan of action that is likely to be adopted at Santiago.
Insofar as the World Bank is concerned, we hope to bring about a fairly significant increase in our own activities in this area. We were lending at the rate of about US$400 to US$500 million a year, 1995 to 1997; so, about US$1.5 billion for this 3-year period, and if all goes well, we may reach the total of 3 years in one year in 1998. So, this year, it is our expectation, if all goes well, we may have a lending program of about US$1.4 to US$1.5 billion.
While lending amount is significant, it is the qualitative aspects on which we are concentrating a great deal of attention. And here, I just want to mention a couple of examples. One is the Educo project in El Salvador, where the Bank supported a project which was developed by the Government in El Salvador which brings in the parents as very close partners in the management of the educational sector, and this particular project has had some very, very good results and is now being copied not only in other parts of Latin America but in other parts of the world as well.
Another good example of the type of successes that can be achieved is when you adopt a holistic approach, as has been done by the Government of Brazil, which has now defined a longer-term program for improvement of education. It's a program that stretches over 5 to 10 years, depending on where you are, in what part of the Brazilian country you are operating in, and it aims to improve all manner of things: quality of teachers, quality of textbooks, quality of physical plant that the students go to, and we in the World Bank are also assisting in this particular endeavor.
Mr. Wolfensohn will be hosting a conference of education ministers, finance ministers and heads of a number of--a number of heads of private businesses in June of this year, the idea being twofold: number one, to have the finance ministers recognize how important it is to provide appropriate amount of resources and the right kind of resources to the education sector and for a dialogue to take place between the private sector, which is, after all, the user of schools and colleges and those people who provide education. This is the part of the postsummit program, and Mr. Wolfensohn's conference will take place here in Washington on June 5.
Very briefly, let me just touch on one other subject, which is reduction of poverty and inequality. This remains an area of great concern for the World Bank and obviously, we will be watching the discussions in Santiago with a tremendous amount of interest. Just to give you some numbers, we estimate that currently, something like 38 percent of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean lives under the poverty line, which we define as income of US$2 per capita per day, and 16 percent live in extreme poverty, which, as you know, is defined as per capita income of US$1 for one day.
When you translate these proportions into actual numbers, you come to the conclusion that today, Latin America has 175 million people living in poverty, of which 65 million are living in absolute poverty. A lot of our work, both analytical as well as lending work, has now begun to address the problem of poverty, and we are adopting the approach of ascertaining the impact of our programs on the poorer segments of the population, putting into place remedial actions that need to be adopted in order to take care of the people who might be adversely affected by some of the programs that have been supported which directly address poverty by providing services to the poor, by improving the quality of education and health, by concentrating in particular on a number of vulnerable groups, especially women, youth in cities, indigenous people and rural people who have not very good access to assets of production.
So, poverty has become and will remain a very significant part of our efforts in Latin America and the Caribbean.
This, then, is a very quick overview of--touching upon two of the four subjects that will be dealt with by the summiteers in Santiago. My colleagues Guillermo Perry and Don Winkler will join me, I'm sure, in taking your questions.
QUESTION: This is a general question. I believe I read in the papers that the World Bank and the IDB--
MR. BURKI: Would you identify yourself, please?
QUESTION: Jesus Izqueir (phonetic) from the Mexican News Agency.
I read in a Brazilian newspaper that the World Bank and the IDB are preparing a package of US$45 billion to support all of the items, and that it is going to put it on the plan of action of the Summit of the Americas.
MR. BURKI: I can't give you the exact numbers, because our planning takes place in the context of individual countries. We developed, as you know, a country assistance strategy for Brazil, for Mexico and so forth, and what comes out of this strategy in terms of lending is decided when these strategies are produced. Having said that, it is our expectation that the World Bank lending for education is likely to increase by about 50 percent.
As I indicated to you, in this financial year, which will end on 30th of June 1998, we are expecting to do about US$1.4 or US$1.5 billion of lending. In FY99, next year, we will probably touch US$2 billion, and 2 years hence, we will probably reach the level of US$3 billion. There will be, depending on which one you use as the base year, between a 50 to 100 percent increase in lending for education.
Yes?
QUESTION: Paulo Sotero from Estado Sao Paulo.
Mr. Burki, the World Bank did a study some years back about the, I think at that point, 50 projects on education it had done at that point. Now, since then, I know that there have been some changes, and there are some programs that are being implemented right now. What can you tell us about those programs that are actually being implemented? Are they working? Or not only in Brazil; in other areas, so we will not revisit the situation where, years later, you discover that the programs are not that effective?
Are they being monitored, and what can you tell us?
MR. BURKI: One of the things that we have put a tremendous amount of emphasis on is on the implementation of our portfolio, improving the quality of implementation of our portfolio. We have spent a lot of time, a lot of resources on this, and in doing this, we have also worked very closely with our clients, with the governments who are implementing these programs.
In Brazil, for instance, Mr. Wolfensohn and President Cardozo set up a joint Brazil-World Bank commission, which was given the task of improving the quality of implementation of the very large portfolio we have in that country. Consequently, as a result of these endeavors, today, the Brazilian portfolio financed by the World Bank is among the finest portfolios in the World Bank. So, there has been a remarkable improvement. And this includes the sector of education.
In other countries also, the quality of implementation, particularly in the social sectors, has improved remarkably, and my expectation is that we will not face the kinds of problems that we faced a few years ago in implementing our social sector projects.
Why has that happened? I would like to focus on three things. Number one, we are now very closely involved with the recipients of benefits that are expected from these projects when the projects are designed. So, when you work with the communities that are going to benefit, our appreciation, our assessment is that projects are better designed and also better implemented.
Second, we are now working within a fairly well-defined country strategy of which one part would be social development. So, these are not isolated things that we do. We do them as part of country strategies, so that when they become part of a country's program, release of resources, development of institutions, et cetera, does not become a problem as it used to in the past, and third, a very important thing that we have begun to do is to be flexible when we run into problems in implementing the projects.
We have been introducing changes if we run into difficulties reformulating the projects if they are not being well-implemented according to their original designs. In the future, we are very likely to use a new instrument which was introduced a few months ago, less than a year ago, called adaptable program lending. This instrument does the following: that the World Bank agrees with the government to finance a broad set of objectives over a fairly long period of time, say 10 years, and then, within those broad set of objectives and over that period of time, we define individual projects.
And if objectives and the time frame changes, these individual projects can acquire different forms. And this way, you build flexibility into the design of the program, which is why this is called adaptable program lending.
QUESTION: Mr. Burki?
MR. BURKI: Yes?
QUESTION: I have, I guess, a tortured question.
There was a report released last week by an IDB, an interamerican dialogue group, where they said that we do, indeed, need to spend more money per student in Latin America, because even though the share of GDP is as high as you said it was, we're spending about US$250 a year per student, compared to OECD countries that are spending more than US$4,000 a year.
What is the level? I mean, Latin America already spends about US$70 billion a year in education. What level--I mean, you must have studies which show what is the minimum level we need to spend per student to actually make the difference.
MR. BURKI: This is why one brings somebody like Don Winkler with you.
[Laughter.]
MR. BURKI: In order to handle these difficult questions.
MR. WINKLER: Very good.
We don't have studies that say exactly how much money you should spend per person to ensure minimum quality of education. The answer varies, clearly, from country to country. As you may know, this last year, Brazil undertook a major--and you might even say revolutionary--reform of its educational finance system, and what it decided in the context of carrying out that finance reform is that US$350 per child was the minimum which should be guaranteed to all children.
That figure is clearly going to vary from country to country, mainly depending on the level of teacher pay. And since per capita incomes vary across countries, teacher pay varies across countries. This answer clearly varies quite a bit, yes.
QUESTION: Yes, Pablo Sanchez from Univision.
Mr. Winkler, given the figures that Mr. Burki cited on education, what is keeping so many Latin American children out of the educational loop, so to speak? And secondly, what would you tell the average parent in Latin America that the World Bank is going to do that is going to influence changes in that?
MR. WINKLER: Well, various things keep them out of the loop. Let me rephrase that question just a bit, which is what is it that causes the fairly high degree of inequality in educational attainment that we observe in Latin America? And I would say that there are basically three sources at this time. I will first of all say that one source which is no longer so important, which is access to primary schooling, which was a major source of inequality, let's say, two decades ago, is no longer a major source of inequality.
The source of inequality, instead, is the quality of schooling that those children receive. Clearly, as is true in most parts of the world, poorer children don't receive the quality of instruction that richer children do.
And, secondly, it would be differences in the access to schooling that one observes in the preschool years and in the secondary school years. In both of those cases, we're talking about enrollment rates, the coverage of the relevant population that is, say, let's under 40 percent, and that under 40 percent means that it's basically the 40 percent who are receiving that access are those who tend to be higher income. So, that is a major source of inequalities.
And what the World Bank is doing is basically trying to address both of these issues, on the one hand, working with governments to raise quality in a variety of other ways, be it supporting efforts to extend the school year or the amount of time that children spend learning or be it efforts to try to improve the quality of what goes on inside the classroom through a variety of interventions.
And, in addition, we are certainly supporting improvements in access at both the preprimary and the secondary level, and here, I think it is important to emphasize the secondary level, because, again, taking up on Mr. Burki's comments about some of the goals of the summit, at the Miami summit, the leaders of the region committed themselves to, by the year 2010, having 100 percent of all students, all children, completing primary school and 75 percent of all children enrolled in secondary school, 75 percent of the age group enrolled in secondary school.
This is a major challenge for the region. It requires almost a doubling of enrollment in secondary school between now and the year 2010. That is a very ambitious objective, one that we certainly fully endorse, and we are certainly working with a number of countries at the present time to help make that a reality.
QUESTION: [Question in Spanish; not interpreted. Translation provided by Bank staff.] Have you changed your perspective regarding the Asian crisis and its impact on Latin America from your last paper?
MR. PERRY: Basically, the outlook that we presented in the paper you're referring to at the beginning of March on the effects and lessons from the Asian crisis keeps more or less today. We don't have many reasons for changing it; that is to say that the major effect of the Asian crisis in Latin America has been, strangely, a traditional terms of trade chalk.
Now, due basically to a sharp reduction of commodity prices, now, not all the reduction in commodity prices can be attributed to the Asian crisis. Part of the reduction in oil prices, for example, has also effects from El Niño that changed the weather in the northern countries, so, they have needed less; they have demanded less oil derivatives for heating and also to events in the Middle East and some other things, and also, there probably has been a very strong investment in some of these sectors, thinking that the very high rates of growth of the Asian countries could continue.
So, we still think that the commodity prices will remain rather low. We can't make a very precise forecast. The outlook for oil has improved somehow because of the action of the producing countries, but still, everybody is projecting prices below last year.
Now, as you know, there are other effects, some due to the fact that a few countries in the region were already exporting an important share of their exports to Asia. Especially Peru and Chile were exporting more or less 20 percent of their exports to the countries that have been affected by the Asian crisis; Brazil about 13; Argentina about 10; the others were negligible. So, this has some effect. It's not a big effect but some effect.
And there is the competitiveness effect, which really, we are still just beginning to feel. Because of the devaluations of the Asian countries, their exports are going to be more competitive.
Now, the effect here depends on where the real exchange rates stabilize. We don't know yet at what level they will stabilize; how soon they will get their act together to really translate that into very strong exports; and how competitive their export structures are with our own countries. Very rough estimates suggest that the country which might have a major--a higher effect here but still not a huge effect would be Mexico, something that, in the worst of cases, could come close to 1 percent of GDP; then, Brazil; that, by comparison, would be somewhere on the order of 0.3 or 0.4 percent of GDP and the other ones very little.
There might be some countries in Central America and the Caribbean that have maquilas that compete with some of the products of Asia that also can have some effect. But this is still very early to know, and these effects are just beginning to be felt.
On the financial side, maybe the most important effect is an indirect one. These trade effects tend to increase the current account deficits, and the current account deficits were already increasing, and some countries already have a moderate. So, the authorities in all countries are being very prudent, are taking measures to avoid an important increase in the current account deficits in a year in which these current account deficits are going to be more difficult and more costly to finance.
So, you are seeing all over the region the central banks increasing interest rates; the governments reducing fiscal expenditure or increasing some taxes as a prudential measure to avoid an important increase in the current account deficit, and we applaud that attitude of the authorities.
Of course, those prudential measures, together with the direct effects, the two of them will mean slower growth in 1998 compared to 1997. 1997 was a very bright year, 5.2 percent on average for the region, 6.2 without Brazil, and this year, this is going to be something on the order of 3 to 3.3 percent. Not all of the slowdown is due to the Asian crisis and these prudential measures taken in front of the fact but a large part.
The important thing, however, is that Latin America did not suffer a contagion. No country--there was not a single country that really developed a crisis because of the contagion, as happened in five countries in Asia, the reason being--we have made the analysis of financial vulnerabilities--that our countries were in a much better shape than the Asian countries, especially with respect to the financial sector, much stronger financial sectors than what our counterparts had at the moment of the beginning of the crisis.
QUESTION: Yes, Mr. Perry, speaking about deficits, as you know, Argentina has a growing current account deficit, and you know there is this discussion of what to do. Some people are arguing that the economy has to slow down; that the Government should slow down the economy. Some say no. I would like to know your opinion about this.
MR. PERRY: There is going to be some slowdown, in any case, from the very high rate of growth last year, which I will have to figure here, but if my memory doesn't fail me, it was more than 7 percent, close to 8 percent of GDP.
So, that clearly is going to come down both from the direct and indirect effect of the crisis and some policy measures. Now, the estimates, at this moment, raise from 5 to 5.5 percent, and there is some discussion on the margins if there should be a little more cooling off. It is difficult to say what is the optimal degree of prudential measures. So, in general terms, we are, let's say, encouraging the countries to be prudent, because it's better to have half a point less of growth this year or one point less but to make sure that they don't expose themselves to changes in market sentiments.
QUESTION: Jim Cason; I write for a newspaper published in Mexico called La Jornada.
Mr. Perry, I had a question for you and then a question for Mr. Burki. You said, if I understood you correctly, that Mexico might suffer a 1 percent decline in GDP as a result of the Asia crisis. Could you maybe explain that a little bit and help us understand why? And for Mr. Burki, the question about poverty: you gave some statistics that are current-day statistics. Are the numbers of people living in poverty going up in Latin America or going down?
MR. PERRY: Let me make clear: I said that the increased competitiveness of Asian countries may have an effect, in the worst of cases, of about 1 point of percent of GDP in Mexico. What that means is that fully developed, the effects of higher Asian competitiveness could mean that Mexico would grow one point less than what it would grow otherwise, okay?
Now, this estimate depends on two assumptions. One is the degree of competitiveness and suitability of exports. So, this is a worst assumption; probably, it could be less. And it would also depend on the authorities' reaction. If, when this pressure is felt, and if it is felt in that way, the authorities permit an additional depreciation of the peso, as they did already, then, the effect will be lower. And probably, that's what they will do.
So, that's like the--how do you say--the maximum effect on the worst case. I just was quoting that fear to mention that these effects are not as high for Latin America as we might have thought initially, before doing the calculations. Because, in the worst of cases, it would be like that, and it's not immediate. It's not in this year, because it won't be felt just in one year, because the Asian countries are not yet being able to have a very strong export growth as a response to the devaluation. So, it would be felt in a longer period, a longer span of time. So, in synthesis, our projection for Mexico is still of very good growth for this year, 4.5 to 4.8.
MR. BURKI: I think the best way to answer your question about poverty is to draw this kind of a picture. As I indicated, you have two poverty lines. This is a poverty line which indicates per capita income of US$2 per day. So, it's about US$730. And this is a poverty line which is an absolute poverty line; this is US$1 per day; so, about US$365 per capita.
In Latin America, 65 million people live below this poverty line, and 110 million people live between these two lines, between absolute poverty and the other kind of poverty. These 110 million people are very susceptible to changes in the rate of growth of the economy. They go up if the economy is doing well; employment expands; jobs become available. They come down when there is a decline in the rate of growth. So, when you talk about fluctuations in poverty, you're talking about this slot, which is sitting very close to this poverty line.
Now, when Argentina had a very sharp decline in GDP growth rate and a very sharp increase in the rates of unemployment; they went up to 18.6 percent, a number of people who were above the line fell below, and, therefore, poverty levels increased. But as employment levels have begun to pick up, these people have begun to migrate once again.
In Mexico, which also saw a very significant decline in GDP growth, people fell below, but now, over the last 18 months or so, we've seen a very robust growth in the economy, and since this growth has now begun to translate, as you would have seen in the papers a couple of days ago that now, the Mexican authorities are saying that real wages have begun to increase; one would expect that people who fell below have started to go up.
In our own work, it is these people, this 65 million people, that concern us a great deal. These people are affected more by the rate of increase in GDP. These people are affected more by the kinds of programs, targeted programs that are undertaken by the governments and by ourselves. They are not that sensitive to GDP growth rates as they are. And when I was talking about targeted interventions and improving the quality of services, et cetera, I was referring more to these people than to those that exist between these two lines.
QUESTION: In other words, the slowdown in the growth of the economy maybe caused an increase in the poverty in Latin America for the next year.
MR. BURKI: Well, it could, yes; that has been the experience: if GDP comes down, you can expect poverty levels to increase somewhat but not to a very great extent.
Yes?
QUESTION: I had a question about why you're increasing education money so much; I'm sorry; I'm Emily Schwartz from Bloomberg News, and I just wanted to confirm: you're talking about hitting US$3 billion per year by fiscal year 2000? And if you could clarify a little bit, you said if all goes well about your lending this year. So, if you could explain what that meant.
MR. BURKI: I'm sorry? If--
QUESTION: You had said, when you predicted that lending in FY98 would be US$1.5 billion, you said if all goes well, so, I wanted you to clarify that. And if you could, give an estimate about what this education money will be as a proportion of total lending.
MR. BURKI: Yes; let me start with the last question. I would expect that education lending will be about 40 percent of the total lending by the World Bank by the end of the next 3-year period.
We are expecting a very sharp increase in our lending levels because, as I indicated earlier on, we have begun to develop new programs--countries are developing new programs, in which we are supporting them. Brazil's program is a case in point, but a number of other countries are now coming in with new initiatives which we will be supporting.
It is our analysis that in order to have an effect on poverty levels and in order to improve income distribution, no other intervention works better than intervention in the sector of education. And among those to be educated, if you concentrate your education on women, you have the highest payoff in terms of GDP growth rate, in terms of poverty alleviation, in terms of improvement in income distribution.
So, it makes an extremely good economic sense for countries to concentrate their attention on education, which is the reason why the Santiago summit will be remembered as an education summit.
A number of new, innovative things are being done in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, and these will be supported by us. Let me mention three or four things that come to mind, and then, I will turn to Don to tell us a bit more if you have interest.
As more and more systems become responsive to what the parents want for their children, and there is a better association of parents in running the school systems, I can see ourselves getting involved in providing assistance if that is the sort of approach. There is also a determination on the part of educators that preschool education before children attend school is also an extremely good way of increasing the quality of education. So, preschool program philosophies are supported by the World Bank.
We know that teacher training is extremely important. We are thinking of using our resources to have programs aimed at improving the quality of teachers by improving their training, and for this, we may use new technologies: computer-related technologies, distance learning, et cetera, in order to reach a very large number of teachers.
Finally, there is a very innovative project in Mexico which we will be supporting in which we will be assisting some parts of the financial sector to provide subsidized scholarships to children who cannot afford education at the university level. This sort of thing, the Bank has not done in the past, but if this program succeeds, I can see ourselves doing more and more projects of this type, so, we will no longer be confining ourselves mostly to primary education. We may now also go into university education.
QUESTION: And that 40 percent, was that just Latin America, or was it the whole Bank?
MR. BURKI: No, no, I was talking about Latin America.
QUESTION: Okay; thank you.
MR. BURKI: Don, do you want to add anything?
MR. WINKLER: Yes; just to expand just a bit on what some of the needs are here, number one--number two, let me first say that for those of us working in the education sector and who have been working on education in Latin America for some time, we have to view this summit and the commitment being made by the political leaders as just extremely important. These are very important commitments they're talking about making for improving the quality of education and improving its access.
It also comes at a unique and interesting time. I don't think I'll put this up, but I have a graph here. This happens to be the absolute number of the school children aged 5 to 19. The interesting thing is that in the past couple of decades, Latin America has been running fast to stay in place. While you've had very rapid growth in the school-aged population, you've had to devote more and more resources just to keep the coverage rate constant.
Now, we're at a point, a point in this curve where it is levelling off. I think it's growing at about 1 percent per year at the present time. So, it means right now, countries can seriously think about dramatically increasing coverage in these areas, especially preschool and secondary school, where really, absolute levels of coverage are still quite low. So, it really is a unique opportunity. This commitment, I think, that the leaders are going to make is extremely important for reaching some of these ends.
And then, just one other thing, which is in terms of the needs. I mentioned about some of the participation rates in preschool and secondary school. But in higher education, sort of an overlooked fact is how Latin America has had very little increase in coverage over the past 15 years. If we look at what percent of the age group is enrolled in higher education, and we compare 1980 with 1995, what we will observe is looking at countries like some of the lower-income countries of Southern Europe, or we look at some of the tigers of Asia. Those countries have at least doubled their coverage rates in that 15-year time period.
In Latin America, I don't have an overall average, but it has not increased very much. And, more importantly, for the two largest countries in the region, Mexico and Brazil, there has been absolutely no change. I think it's constant in Brazil at 11 percent of the age group and in Mexico at 14 percent of the age group. This is low coverage relative to the countries with which they wish to compete economically.
So, one of the things we can expect--there are a couple of things. One is one can certainly expect increased social demand for access to higher education. And what Mr. Burki was saying is that we can expect that we the World Bank will be supporting those efforts and especially, I think, working with the private sector to help.
MR. BURKI: So that you don't get the impression that Mr. Guillermo Perry doesn't know much about education, he would like now to come into this discussion as well.
MR. PERRY: It's not for that reason that I would like to comment.
[Laughter.]
MR. PERRY: It is because it is not--normally, those involved in education, of course, could welcome a very big push to the educational sector. But what I would like to say is that, as chief economist for the region, I and all of my colleagues, all of the economists, are quite convinced that this is the first priority in the region. And so, we welcome this: the concentration of the summit in the topic of education.
If you remember, in the publication we put out last year of the long march, the first of the five strategies for the next decade that we put forward was precisely what we call quality investment in human capital, and really, the issue of increasing coverage of preschool and secondary school and the very urgent issue of improving quality of basic education is something that we see as absolutely critical for increased growth in the medium term, increased competitiveness in a more open economy and increased growth, and for improving the distribution of income in the middle term, as Javed said, probably no other measure is more important.
Let me also mention that there is also a very important coincidence between the agenda that the Bank has been pushing as the major topics of agenda and the topics in Santiago. It is also the topic of financial sector, which has been our second priority here in the report that is a major topic in the summit and the whole issue of governance and public sector efficiency: transparency, efficiency, justice reform and so on.
So, really, at the Bank, we are extremely happy of the major topics chosen by the summit. We do believe those are the basic critical areas for higher growth and better distribution of income in the next 10 years.
MR. BURKI: Let me--no, I'll have to conclude, because I gather there is going to be another press conference in this room. So, I just want to conclude by thanking you all for coming to this conference. All three of us will be in Santiago, and those of you who will also go to Santiago are most welcome to get in touch with us.
[Whereupon, at 2:22 p.m., the press briefing was concluded.]
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