Middle-income countries are likely to face an uncertain path to development. Their strategy may need to mutate from a focus on manufacturing to a multipronged one. Unleashing the potential of those sectors requires cooperation between different private and public actors that need to coordinate. Productive development policies (PDPs) are all about solving these coordination failures. When I became Minister of Production of Peru, I had the opportunity to lead a team that designed and implemented a tool, Mesas Ejecutivas (MEs), that could be part of the toolkit of PDPs. A ME is a working group that includes private and public actors around a sector or a factor of production. They aim at identifying and removing the constraints affecting the productivity of the sector or factor, understanding that much will be learned during execution. The target audience for this article is policymakers facing similar challenges. The main message should be that there are three main prerequisites for a successful ME: (1) a private sector capable and interested in problem solving; (2) a public sector willing to participate and able to deliver; and (3) some convener very high-up in government capable of inducing cooperation among the different stakeholders, resolving disputes, enacting regulation and allocating budget.
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