Uruguay and the Commitment to the Future

Structural reform, global integration and state modernization as conditions for social cohesion in the twenty-first century.

Uruguay and the Commitment to the Future
Structural Reform and Social Cohesion for Twenty-First-Century Uruguay
By Dr. Nelson Jorge Mosco Castellano

Introduction: The Challenge of Institutional Maturity
Uruguay has been, throughout its republican history, an example of civility, institutional stability and unrestricted attachment to the norms of democratic coexistence. Those of us who have had the privilege of travelling the world and observing the complexities of development in different latitudes turn our gaze back to our homeland with a deep sense of gratitude for those intangible assets.
Social peace, legal certainty and respect for pluralism are not minor goods; they are the foundations on which any national project worthy of that name is built.
However, complacency is the greatest enemy of progress.
We cannot ignore that our economy has carried, for decades, a worrying structural limitation: a potential growth rate persistently around 1.5% to 2% per year.
In a world characterized by unprecedented technological acceleration and a dizzying reconfiguration of trade flows, such a slow pace condemns us to irrelevance and, more seriously, severely restricts our possibilities of offering genuine channels of social advancement for new generations.
True equity does not arise from the voluntaristic distribution of shared scarcity, but from the creation of a society of opportunities where the talent, effort and initiative of each citizen can unfold in their full magnitude.
To consolidate a dynamic economy and upward social mobility, Uruguay must undertake a set of deep reforms with boldness, pragmatism and a long-term outlook.
It is time to formulate a new pact of modernization that combines economic efficiency with deep human sensitivity.
International Integration and Competitiveness: Breaking the Moorings of Isolation
No country of small demographic size has achieved development by looking inward. The scale of our domestic market is intrinsically limited, which forces us to conceive the world as our natural space for economic deployment.
Economic history demonstrates unequivocally that external openness and exposure to global competition are the most powerful drivers of productivity and innovation.
First, we must address our situation in the regional concert with realism and broad-mindedness.
Mercosur, which was born with an integrating vocation and an ambitious spirit of complementarity, has become trapped in bureaucratic rigidities and political tensions that limit our freedom of maneuver.
Uruguay needs to decisively and constructively promote the flexibilization of the bloc. This is not about renouncing our geographical neighborhood or our historical ties, but about understanding that modern trade diplomacy requires agility. We must weave bilateral alliances and direct free trade agreements with the most dynamic regions of the planet, both in Southeast Asia and in Europe and the Americas.
Second, external openness lacks sustainability if it is not accompanied by a shock of internal competitiveness.
Uruguay suffers from a persistent ailment of high fixed costs that suffocates our producers, exporters and, very particularly, the small entrepreneur trying to make his way forward. This reality is closely linked to the existence of strongly regulated market structures, protected oligopolies and state or private monopolies that have lost the stimulus of competition.
It is imperative to deregulate key sectors such as energy, fuels and logistics services. Introducing competition does not mean dismantling public assets, but rather demanding from them the highest standards of international efficiency so that they stop acting as a hidden tax on national production.
Free competition is, ultimately, the most democratic mechanism for allocating resources, since it destroys corporate privileges and lowers the cost of living for Uruguayan families.
The Technological Revolution and the New Governance of the State
The Uruguayan State has historically been the great articulator of society, a buffer for tensions and a guarantor of essential services.
That tradition of public protection is part of our identity. Nevertheless, the state apparatus cannot become an end in itself or a heavy burden to be borne by the private sector.
The modernization of public management is not an ideological banner; it is an imperative of social justice and economic survival.
Public administration must fully enter the digital era through what we call the “agentic revolution.”
The incorporation of autonomous artificial intelligence systems and distributed ledger technologies, such as blockchain, offers a historic opportunity to refound the relationship between citizens and the State. These tools allow us to move toward absolute transparency, where budget execution, public procurement and the allocation of subsidies can be audited in real time.
By automating bureaucratic processes and eliminating redundant procedures that dull private initiative, we drastically reduce the margins for administrative discretion and corporate favors.
An agile and digitalized State is a State that returns power to civil society.
Likewise, this internal efficiency must converge with rigorous macroeconomic discipline.
It is essential to consolidate a fiscal rule whose main compass is aligned with the real level of indebtedness and the country’s intergenerational sustainability.
When the State spends beyond its real possibilities, it ends up absorbing the genuine credit that the private sector — farmers, industrialists, merchants, software creators — requires in order to invest and generate quality employment.
Maintaining the health of public finances is the safeguard of our economic sovereignty and the guarantee that we will not finance present well-being by mortgaging the future of our children.
We will continue developing these concepts in order to promote a truly harmonious and possible change.

Structural reform
Open competitiveness
Digital state

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