ECLAC warns that Latin America's GDP will grow 2.1% in 2022 | News

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) indicated this Wednesday that the GDP of Latin America and the Caribbean will only grow by an estimated 2.1 percent for 2022, a figure lower than the 6.2 percent experienced at the end of 2021.

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After stating that there is "a very significant slowdown in growth throughout the region," the executive secretary of ECLAC, Alicia Bárcenas, presented the Preliminary Balance of the Economies in 2021, which indicates that regional integration can be a factor in boost to the reactivation of economies.

"The expected average growth of 2.1 percent reflects a high heterogeneity" where the Caribbean will grow 6.1 percent (excluding Guyana), while in Central America it will increase by 4.5 percent, and the South American region will do so by 1.4 percent.

Similarly, the regional body warned that this slowdown takes place in a context of significant asymmetries between developed, emerging and developing countries on the ability to implement fiscal, social, monetary, health and vaccination policies for a sustainable recovery of the crisis unleashed by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Alicia Bárcenas expressed that “the expected slowdown in the region in 2022, together with the structural problems of low investment and productivity, poverty and inequality, require that reinforcing growth be a central element of policies, while addressing inflationary pressures and macro-financial risks ”.

According to the ECLAC annual balance, the region faces various economic challenges, among which the persistence of the health situation due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the slow recovery of employment (30 percent of jobs lost in 2020 have not yet been recovered in 2021), and the persistence of the social effects of the crises.

Regarding unemployment, the regional entity indicated that in 2022 an unemployment of 11.5 percent is projected for women, a figure not substantially higher than that reported in 2021: 11.8 percent.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the unemployment rate was 9.5 percent, which shows gender inequality, and the impact on it is strengthened by Covid-19. Unemployment, in the case of men, would be 8.0 percent this year, almost the same as in 2021 (8.1 percent), but still well above the 6.8 percent recorded in 2019.

According to estimates, the Latin American countries that grew the most in 2021 are Peru (13.5 percent), Panama (12.4 percent), Chile (11.8 percent), Dominican Republic (10.4 percent), El Salvador (10 percent), Argentina (9.8 percent), Colombia (9.5 percent) and Honduras (9 percent).

While the worst performers in 2021 were Uruguay (3.9 percent), Ecuador (3.1 percent), the Caribbean islands (3 percent), Cuba (0.5 percent), Haiti (-1.3 percent) and Venezuela ( -3 percent).

In the case of Cuba and Venezuela, this situation is mediated by the blockade and sanctions imposed by the United States Government on both countries, in addition to other external and internal factors derived from that siege.

However, a fundamental piece of information is the active participation of Cuba in the development of its own vaccines, including Abdala with a percent effectiveness of 92.26 percentage points, Soberana 02, and Soberana Plus. Cuba is among the leading nations of people vaccinated against Covid-19, as well as at the forefront in the immunization of girls and boys, both in Latin America and the Caribbean, and worldwide.