Annotated provisional agenda. Sixty-second meeting of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean

Preliminary Overview of the Economies of Latin America and the Caribbean 2021

This edition of Preliminary Overview of the Economies of Latin America and the Caribbean analyzes the economic and social dynamics at play last year, and explores the risks and policy challenges that the region will face in 2022 for driving a transformative recovery. More specifically, the document presents new Gross Domestic Product (GDP) estimates for the region and all of its countries in 2021, along with projections for 2022.…

Reference framework for security and criminal justice statistics in Latin America and the Caribbean

The Hummingbird Vol. 9 No. 1

Women’s economic empowerment in the Arab Region: advancing care economies

Economic and social effects of a possible trade agreement between Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) concluded between Asian Pacific States in 2020 is expected to change regional and global trade patterns. Based on a Computable General Equilibrium model (including 41 countries and 39 sectors), the underlying paper evaluates the impact of firstly, RCEP on trade between Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) and Asian Pacific member countries, and secondly, a hypothetical free trade area in LAC and thirdly, a free trade agreement within and between the two regions. Results are analyzed on the country —and sector— level by type of agent (small a…

Investing in sustainable, resilient and inclusive infrastructure for economic recovery

This document outlines the situation and challenges of infrastructure investments in Latin America and the Caribbean, taking the global environment as a reference, and sets out some considerations on the behaviour of investments in 2020 and the outlook for 2021. It summarizes some of the stimulus packages provided by the countries for recovery from economic crisis caused by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. It also highlights the need for sustainable, resilient and inclusive infrastructure criteria in order to make economic recovery more dynamic, to narrow some structural gaps, and …

Is existing digital infrastructure a constraint on recovery?

This FAL Bulletin aims to answer the question of whether the technological infrastructure available in the region is a constraint on post-pandemic recovery. It shows why existing technological infrastructure is not a constraint on recovery but rather the opposite, emphasizing the key role infrastructure has played in reducing the pandemic’s impact. It concludes with a set of considerations and recommendations, highlighting the importance of continuing to develop technological infrastructure in the region.…

State of cybersecurity in logistics in Latin America and the Caribbean

The dizzying changes that have been brought about by technologies of the fourth industrial revolution in the transition to logistics 4.0 will have an impact on countries, businesses, industries and society as a whole. The COVID-19 pandemic has reduced production, exports and imports in Latin America and the Caribbean. At the same time, it has become a catalyst for digitization, accelerating the transition process and making it possible for operations to continue during lockdowns and enabling them gradually to recover, while also reducing interaction among people. In order to maintain their ope…

The COVID-19 pandemic: the right to education of children and adolescents in Latin America and the Caribbean

The COVID-19 pandemic has clearly generated an unprecedented crisis for the entire world. The most strongly affected region has been Latin America and the Caribbean, which accounts for 18.5% of COVID-19 cases and 30.3% of deaths in the world as of October 2021, while it represents just 8.4% of the total world population. Children and adolescents have not been exempt from the effects, but rather have been particularly hard hit by the reduction in their families’ well-being and income, the forced confinement, the reduction of interpersonal contact, the closure of schools, the loss of their prima…

United States economic outlook: Third quarter of 2021

Economic growth in the United States slowed to 2.1% year-on-year in the third quarter of 2021, from 6.7% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2021. Consumer spending in the third quarter rose at its slowest pace since the recovery began, as durable goods spending fell sharply amid supply shortages and rising inflationary pressures. The labour market remained strong, averaging 651,000 new jobs per month. With the Federal Reserve shifting its stance towards reducing accommodative measures at a faster pace, Latin America and the Caribbean may experience tighter external financial conditions next…

Essential elements of the ECLAC Caribbean Resilience Fund : a segregated portfolio trust fund. Policy Brief

Declining economic growth and competitiveness, the impact of the 2007–2009 global financial crisis, and the challenge of climate change and extreme weather events have hindered the sustainable development of Caribbean economies, the generation of sustained welfare gains and the achievement of key Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the subregion’s vulnerability to the vagaries of global aggregate demand and commodity prices, which have largely driven the subregion’s debt upwards and dampened economic growth before its onset, compromising its ec…

Subnational Poverty Estimates for Latin America

Subnational poverty maps are used by governments to design, implement and monitor development policies more effectively by targeting them to the places or population groups that need them most urgently. This note describes the poverty mapping methodology based on small-area estimation methods, as used by the Statistics Division of ECLAC. The methodology makes it possible to combine census information with household survey data to make estimations at the provincial, communal, or municipal levels, for which direct estimates from household surveys are generally too imprecise. This note illustrat…

Conceptualizing a circular economy in the Caribbean: perspectives and possibilities. Policy Brief

Although the notion of a circular economy (CE) has been conceived and debated for more than half a century (Henrysson and Nuur, 2021), it has gained considerable popularity in the lexicon of economists, ecologists and other development thinkers over the past two decades. The increasing evidence of the existential threat of human-induced climate change and the related imperatives of decarbonizing the global economy, have led to greater focus on strategies for a more sustainable use of the natural and environmental resource base.…

International Trade Outlook for Latin America and the Caribbean 2021: Pursuing a resilient and sustainable recovery

In its 2021 edition, this ECLAC annual report examines the foreign trade performance of the region’s economies during the current year, with the most recent figures available on the impact of COVID-19 and the post-pandemic recovery in the distinct countries. The publication consists of three chapters. The first analyzes the evolution of global and regional trade in the last year and their prospects for a post-pandemic recovery. The second chapter examines the challenge of achieving productive autonomy in the region’s health industry, and the third offers proposals for defining the contribution…

Annotated provisional agenda. Third meeting of the Conference on Science, Innovation and Information and Communications Technologies of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean

An innovative financing for development agenda for the recovery in Latin America and the Caribbean

COVID-19 has brought to the fore the need to address the problem of financing for development in middle-income countries, which has been characterized by the increasing decoupling of per capita income and the ability to mobilize domestic and external resources, and the disconnect between economic and social needs and the response of multilateral cooperation. This must be urgently addressed, as Latin American and Caribbean countries must recover from the effects of the pandemic and avoid another lost decade. Middle-income countries, such as those in Latin America and the Caribbean, require mult…

United States-Latin America and the Caribbean Trade Developments 2021

United States trade is showing a healthy recovery in 2021 in both imports and exports of goods and services, although some categories of services are still suffering the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. Travel, transport, and tourism have not returned to pre-pandemic levels. In contrast, trade in goods has recovered in all major categories. United States-Latin America and the Caribbean Trade Developments 2021 provides an overview of developments in United States trade relations with Latin America and the Caribbean. Following the global focus on the climate crisis and the specific…

The demand for cash: stylized facts and substitution by electronic means of payment

This article analyses the impact of the increasing use of electronic means of payment on the demand for cash (banknotes and coins). It estimates two models: one with panel data and the other with cross-sectional data. The two methodologies offer complementary views for evaluating the degree to which electronic means of payment act as a determinant of currency in circulation. The study identifies an intense substitution process between cash and electronic means of payment, which is common to most of the economies analysed. However, there are also a number of idiosyncratic factors that explain t…

Tax exemption in Brazil in 2009: why vehicles and not agriculture? An interregional general equilibrium analysis

Tax exemption has been used systematically in Brazil to stimulate the economy. In 2009, in an attempt to stem the economic slowdown, the Brazilian government adopted a countercyclical economic policy that included lowering taxes on vehicle prices. Why was this sector chosen rather than another? This article seeks to analyse the effects of this policy on the Brazilian economy in 2009, using as a counterfactual a tax exemption policy targeted on the agriculture sector. Based on an interregional computable general equilibrium model (TERM-BR), the two policies are simulated and compared. The resul…