Chart: Latin America's Economic and Business Outlook 2019
Chart: Latin America's Economic and Business Outlook 2019
The 2010s have seen stagnant growth in Latin America and the Caribbean, and this year isn’t shaping up to be different.
What’s one of the underlying causes of a wave of protests across the Americas? Sluggish economic growth. In fact, AS/COA’s Brian Winter has gone so far as to refer to the 2010s as “the decade-long hangover,” referring to the disappointing growth following the commodities boom of the 2000s.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the decade will conclude on a high note at the end of 2019. The International Monetary Fund published its biannual World Economic Outlook report on October 30, with Latin America receiving one of the biggest regional downgrades compared to the April edition. The culprits are by and large social ones: falling consumer confidence, rising uncertainty, the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, and so on. But there are small pockets for optimism too, especially in Central America.
AS/COA looks at the latest WEO, as well as the World Bank’s Doing Business report, also released late last month.
