Some countries have found that the best way of enhancing their resources (whether human, technical or financial) is to generate common projects which result in an overall benefit by contributing the best from each country. This strategy has originated, all over the world, processes of sub-regional and regional integration: the European Community, the Andean Group, Mercosur, the Central American Common Market, Caricom, etcetera.
The purpose of these sub-regional integration processes is that progress should be more rapid (albeit in restricted areas) than the global process of economic deregulation and liberalization within international economy. In practice, they act as «subregional development strategies», which strengthen all types of policies harmonization programmes within any field, with the objective of creating the common areas underlying the integration strategy.