Fiscal Panorama of Latin America and the Caribbean 2016: Public finances and the challenge of reconciling austerity with growth and equality

Latin America’s fiscal accounts deteriorated slightly during 2015, registering an average deficit of 3.0% of GDP and average gross public debt of 34.7% of GDP. Of the 19 countries considered, the fiscal deficit and public debt as a share of GDP both increased in 11. The region started to build up public debt, most of it domestic, after the 2008 international financial crisis to meet the growing financing needs resulting from the worsening growth situation.…

Governance of strategic minerals in Latin America: the case of Lithium

The objectives of this report are twofold: The first is to provide an integrated overview of the governance of strategic minerals in the Latin American and Caribbean region, focused on sharing the economic-resource rent. The second objective is to provide a context for the policy proposal of the Chilean National Lithium Commission (NLC. The collected data, and information, on the various fiscal regimes can be used as a reference for further research. The objectives in this report are met by analyzing distinct aspects of strategic mineral governance, in three different parts. The lithium-indust…

Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean. Annual report 2013-2014. Confronting violence against women in Latin America and the Caribbean

The efforts States in our region have made to eradicate violence against women have seen substantial headway on a number of fronts over the past 20 years. This calls for a look at how individual governments have responded and the wide variety of strategies followed. In this report, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) follows up on the Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean commitment to analyse violence against women. It has been drafted by the Observatory’s participating agencies and organizations: the Pan American Health Organization (…

Fiscal Panorama of Latin America and the Caribbean 2015: Policy space and dilemmas. Executive Summary

The present document provides an up-to-date overview of public debt and fiscal space in the region. The main conclusions show that public debt levels are low in Latin America and high in the Caribbean. Overall, the region has enough fiscal space to apply countercyclical policies and boost production development and the fiscal management of non-renewable natural resources needs to be modernized. It explains that fiscal policy has a very limited impact on the distribution of disposable income and in a volatile macroeconomic environment, reforms should aim to strengthen personal income tax.…

Policies and care provision in Latin America: A view of regional experiences

This study identifies the key challenges facing the region in the domain of care provision. To that end it describes, analyses and discusses the concept of care, the rights approach and the public policies implemented in Latin America and the Caribbean on the social organization of care. The document describes care policies in the region generally, and it specifically analyses experiences of the social organization of care provision in four countries. In Chile, it studies the Chile Crece Contigo national child-care programme; in Costa Rica it reviews the National Care Network; in Ecuador, it a…

Evaluation of the ECLAC-AECID Technical Cooperation Programme 2010-2012. Evaluation report. Executive summary

Latin America-European Union cooperation: A partnership for development

The European Union has taken special interest in promoting development cooperation as an instrument along with framework and association agreements. Today, the countries making up the strategic partnership between the European Union and the current Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) are in a far different position from the one envisaged in the early 1990s. Nearly 15 years on from the launch of the strategic partnership between the European Union and the current Community of Latin American and Caribberan States (CELAC, formerly the Rio Group), it is important to look at th…

Women in the digital economy: breaking through the equality threshold

Prepared by ECLAC for the twelfth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, this document systematizes and describes various dimensions that shape the way the region's women participate in the labour market and how they access and use the different elements of the digital economy. Information and communications technologies (ICTs); provide essential support across all economic, political, cultural and social activity, as well as being a production sector in their own right. As such, they are potential allies in the drive to achieve equality by helping…

Road Safety in Latin America and the Caribbean: Recent Performance and Future Challenges

This issue of the FAL Bulletin examines road safety performance in Latin America and the Caribbean between 2000 and 2010. It also sets out the need for road safety measures to be incorporated into an integrated and sustainable mobility policy.…

Gender Equality Observatory of Latin America and the Caribbean. Annual report 2012: A look at grants, support and burden for women

This third report of the Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean focuses on indicators of physical, economic and decision-making autonomy as seen against the backdrop of the regional agenda shaped by the consensuses reached at the ninth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, all of which are in keeping with the Platform for Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995). It also discusses conditional cash transfer (CCT) programmes and their role as a component of social protection systems that can serve as a means…

Developing integrated and sustainable policies on infrastructure, logistics and mobility in Mesoamerica

This issue of the FAL Bulletin summarizes the main outcomes of a regional workshop held in Costa Rica in November 2012 that brought together ministers and high-level authorities from the member countries of the Mesoamerica Project.…

Transport, the poor and moving towards low-carbon societies

This FAL Bulletin discusses the challenges involved in creating equality in urban mobility and the need to reach towards a social sustainability framework, as existing policies often accentuate current inequities and inequalities in accessibility. Lack of access to mobility has wide-ranging effects across social groups, gender and particularly the urban poor.…

Institutional framework, co-modality and sustainable transport services

This issue of the FAL bulletin focuses on the problems which public institutions encounter when formulating transport policies and the challenge of designing and implementing systemic, integrated, sustainable transport policies in the current institutional framework in the countries of Latin America.…

Latin America and the Caribbean and the European Union: striving for a renewed partnership

This report is a contribution by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) to an updated analysis of trade, investment and cooperation relations between Latin America and the Caribbean and the European Union, preparatory to the Seventh European Union-Latin America Summit to be held in Santiago, Chile, in 2012. The publication forms part of ECLAC's 2010-2012 technical cooperation programme with the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID). The Latin American economies have shown tremendous resilience in coping with the deep global economic…

Trade, poverty and complementary policies in Latin America

There is general agreement about the importance of the role played by trade in development policies, and the governments of Latin America and the Caribbean are accordingly seeking to expand their countries' trade and improve the quality of their international specialization as an integral part of their development agendas. Trade provides opportunities to generate economic growth, reduce inequality and increase the incomes of the poor. In particular cases, however, the effects of trade opening can be detrimental to the welfare of the poorest unless it is supported by specific investments a…

Trends in the share of railways in transportation

This issue of the FAL Bulletin analyses the history of railways in modal distribution in Latin America, and puts forward recommendations for improving their functioning and making them a real, competitive and sustainable transport option.…

The gender perspective in transport in Latin America and the Caribbean

This issue of the FAL Bulletin analyses the situation of women in the transport sector in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, from the perspective of women workers. The study begins by giving an overview of labour conditions, looks specifically at the transport sector, and concludes with a series of public policy recommendation.…

Policy alternatives and strategies for the Plurinational State of Bolivia following the end of trade preferences

The governments of Latin America and the Caribbean have made trade-building efforts a key part of their development agenda, given the broad consensus on the important role played by trade in development policy. Although trade is known to provide opportunities to increase the income of the poor, opening up these opportunities depends on a range of domestic factors which complement trade policy and are equally important for generating growth and reducing inequality. The Division of International Trade and Integration of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has appr…

Agricultural incentives, growth and poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean: cross-country evidence for the period 1960-2005. Did trade liberalization increase the incomes of the poorest?

This study focuses on the link between agricultural trade openness and the sector's performance, an improvement in which could have significant impacts on poverty reduction. We emphasize Latin America, during the 1960-2005, using a recently constructed data base of agricultural support Nominal and Relative Rates of Assistance (NRA and RRA) that includes information for several developing countries, beyond the region. The principal question addressed is, does the trade regime influence sectoral growth? With the answer to this question we then make some inferences regarding the influence of…

Trade and poverty in Paraguay: the case of an agribusiness value chain

We propose a methodology involving surveys carried out among a group of small producers linked to a cooperative (Capiibary) to analyse the link between trade and poverty via the inclusion of small family farmers in a value chain headed by a large exporter in Paraguay, Frutika, to which they sell their output of passion fruit (mburucuyá) and other fruits. The cooperative and the firm are located in one of Paraguay's poorest regions, with a poverty coefficient of 41.8% and an even higher incidence of 46.3% in the rural part of the region. The main focus is on evaluating the impact of the li…