We are currently cooperating with the Clean Air Initiative in Latin American Cities, launched by the World Bank in December 1998. I find it refreshing to see from the World Bank a conceptualization of development in which the macroeconomic balances have become a necessary condition for development, and are no longer regarded as the only key to development. Acknowledging that development policy is more than economic policy is a big step forward. I fully agree with the need to take this kind of holistic approach to development. It is the only way to deal meaningfully with development, because of the complexity of the processes involved and the high degree of interconnection existing among them.
Any partial view is doomed to fail, as the experience has shown systematically in the past.
Coming now to the practical model proposed by the CDF approach, I fully agree with the idea that the structural components of development are some concrete entities that have to be managed. Appropriate methods, knowledge and experiences are needed for managing them well, and getting hold of such elements is indeed a central task of any development process. Eleven out of the fourteen structural systems correspond to well-identified social systems existing in any country, that must be managed. I can accept them without major questions. The observations I have deal with production and with the two systems that are related to knowledge and culture.