PANAMES FURTHER its DRAFT PUBLIC POLICY ON CREATIVE Economics FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN MONDIACULT

The Minister of Culture, Giselle González Villarrué participated virtually at the Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development at UNESCO (MONDIACULT 2022) where she detailed Panama's efforts to "face and solve challenges in the cultural field."

In her statement, Minister González Villarrué stated that Panama, based on "The UNESCO 2030 Cultural Thematic Indicators and we have formulated the Public Policy for Creative Economics for Sustainable Development" with an overall aim of contributing to programme improvement with specific projects, capacity-building, innovation of institutional, corporate and community cultural and creative processes.

He reported that the government of President Laurentino Cortizo Cohen, through the newly established Ministry of Culture, structured "investment and priorities strategically with a monitoring framework and an impact monitoring system linked with Agenda 2030."

Special emphasis was put by the incumbent of Culture to point out that Panama's "vision with respect to the future of the creative economy is priority with regard to issues such as environment and resilience, prosperity and dignified livelihoods, especially for our cultural artists and workers, among others.

The Panamanian government believes that gender equality and women's participation will be the key to the sustainability of these bets and added that with the support of the UNESCO and the European Union, the Gender Multidiversity Plan was designed as part of a Strategy for Cultural Inclusion and Participation.

Cultural and creative industries improve people's quality of life, and the country puts at its disposal its institutional skills, so we "invite them to create these new and necessary strategic alliances together, so as to give culture the place it deserves as a unique and unquestionable tool for sustainable development."

The incumbent of Culture recalled that the Panamanian government had been an important step in creating the Ministry of Culture and the General Act of Culture as a legislative basis for the re-design and re-engineering of the cultural field.

Nevertheless, she also emphasized the importance of the support received because as a "youth ministry, international cooperation and financing have been vital partners to implement the necessary transformations of our system of cultural governance."

Finally, the incumbent of Culture held that Panama adds to this renewed will to "move to action" promoted by UNESCO and puts at its disposal its institutional experiences and challenges to create together, "these new and necessary strategic alliances, to give culture the place that it deserves as a unique and unquestionable tool for sustainable development."