Building knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) as the next ecommerce export sector in Latin A

As a panelist in the Productive Transformation and the Knowledge Economy conferences organized by the Inter-America Development Bank and Argentina's Ministry of Production and Labor on 23-24 October 2018 in Buenos Aires, Nextrade CEO Kati Suominen discussed the role and rise of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) in Latin America's exports in the past decade, the kinds of policies the region needs to pursue to enable both greater exports on KIBS, and to birth new KIBS exporters.

Improved KIBS, Suominen argued, are positive for Latin American economies in many ways: they can make the region's manufacturing exports more competitive, enhance the quality of public services, and, when sold online. inherently overcome the constraints facing Latin American firms that seek to sell goods online.