Annual McGill University Tour To Emerging Economic Cities Returns From Latin America

Every year, the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University in Montreal assesses emerging economic areas around the globe.  They then take about 40 students, alumni and faculty to an area pinpointed as experiencing the strongest growth. This year’s “Hot Cities” tour has just returned from three cities in Latin America.

This is the eighth year a group from McGill University has traveled to areas of the world experiencing considerable economic growth.  This year the targeted cities are Santiago, Chile and Bogota and  Cartagena, Colombia.  

Desautels Faculty of Management Professor Karl Moore explains how this year’s cities were chosen.   “The slogan of the trip is ‘Taking the future to the future.’  That is young people to where the world economy’s enjoying considerable growth.  So when we looked at Latin America – Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela are in trouble but Columbia and Chile are thankfully relatively bright lights in the Latin American firmament of economies.  So that’s why we went there this year.  (What is driving their economies?)  It’s been commodities just like Canada and the U.S. to some degree. But the price of copper and coal, we met with the CEO of the largest coal company in Columbia, is down considerably, and oil as well. But I think the central thing is relatively good government. When you at it compared to Brazil and Argentina and Venezuela better governments than they would have in much of Latin America.”

Read full article: WAMC, 17 March, 2016