<h6><strong>The Diplomat</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The Ibero-American Secretary General (SEGIB), Andrés Allamand; the President of CEOE, Antonio Garamendi, and the Ecuadorian ambassador to Spain, Wilma Andrade, presented this Wednesday at the SEGIB headquarters in Madrid the 15th Ibero-American Business Meeting, which will take place in Cuenca, Ecuador, on November 13 and 14.</strong></h4> The region's major business event, the official activity of the XXIX Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government, will focus on the challenges and opportunities that arise in the Ibero-American space, reflected in five thematic axes: innovation and artificial intelligence, inclusion and employability, gender equality, sustainability and infrastructure and connectivity. In his speech, Andrés Allamand stated that "companies and entrepreneurs are important because without them there is no growth" and warned of the importance of promoting growth by focusing on the most vulnerable sectors and the different inequality gaps, especially with women and young people. For his part, Garamendi recalled that the 28 Ibero-American summits “have been accompanied by 14 Business Meetings and 31 meetings of presidents of Ibero-American business organizations, promoted by the International Organization of Employers, OIE, of which we are all part,” and assured that, in all these meetings, the objectives have been “more than fulfilled,” “such as achieving an increasingly high participation, with representatives of the entire Ibero-American business space, made up of more than 33 million companies of all sizes: large, medium and small.” For her part, Ambassador Andrade highlighted her country's policies for attracting capital, the incentives for new investments and the important portfolio of projects - valued at more than 50,000 million dollars, as a “letter of introduction” of a country prepared to host the XV Edition of the Ibero-American Business Meeting. The Ibero-American Business Meeting is organized by SEGIB, CEIB and the FNCIE, in collaboration with the International Organization of Employers-OIE and the Ibero-American Federation of Young Entrepreneurs-FIJE and with the support of ICEX Export and Investments - it reinvents itself in each edition. In addition, the meeting has the support of a group of leading companies worldwide, such as BBVA, development bank of Latin America and the Caribbean-CAF, Corporación Multi Inversiones, Cox, Hispasat, Iberia, Santander, Telefónica and the International University of La Rioja-UNIR, in addition to Iberdrola and Movistar Empresas, which sponsor this edition of the Business Meeting.
