New Publication Presents Data on the Agricultural Sector
in 10 Countries in Central America and the Caribbean

Photo: Bread for the World, Flickr

The ECLAC Subregional Headquarters in Mexico recently published a document which presents information on food trends and the agricultural sector between 2000 and 2010 in 10 countries in Central America and the Caribbean.

The publication Subregion Northern Latin America and the Caribbean: Agricultural sector information, 2000-2010 gathers data from Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and Panama in order to provide the international community with recent disaggregated figures on the evolution of the agricultural sector and the associated macroeconomic variables.

ECLAC has provided this information to try and help in the process of elaborating national and regional assessments of the evolution of the agricultural sector. It also serves in the formulation of agricultural development policies and national strategies, and in the preparation of specific socioeconomic research, all of which facilitates decision-making in the public and private sectors.

The main sources of information which were used for these statistics were official data and studies from ministries of agriculture and livestock, statistics offices, fishery institutes, forestry institutes and national central banks.

In some cases, the figures were supplemented with information from various documents prepared by ECLAC, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Latin American and Caribbean Demographic Centre (CELADE - Population Division of ECLAC), the Central American Economic Integration Secretariat (SIECA) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the Regional Council for Agricultural Co-operation (CORECA) provided information on prices in different markets.

The publication shows tables with the main indicators of the agricultural sector in each country, such as the total and per capita agricultural gross domestic product, agricultural trade, total expenditure, agricultural expenditure and total credit and agricultural credit.

It also includes social and macroeconomic data in percentages on the rural population, the economically active population, the economically active population among rural women, unemployment rates among the population working in agricultural activities, rural poverty and salaries in the sector, gross domestic product (GDP) and the consumer price index (CPI), among others.