ECLAC sees great stress ahead for Latin America
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Loading... - Clarissa Gataki
- 23 Jan 2023
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The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) foresees “great stress” and a “cascade of crises” including rampant inflation and increasing climate change that will affect the livelihoods of people in the region.
“If we make the list of shocks, they have all hit Latin America very hard,” ECLAC Executive Secretary José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs said. “There is a debt shock, an interest rate shock, an inflationary shock, the health shock, the value chain shock. And the longer-term climate change shock, which is there,” he added.
The consequence will be ”a year of great stress on governments, on societies (...) with many demands, with great impatience on the part of the population, both the vulnerable and the poor and the middle classes,“ he also pointed out.
According to ECLAC estimates, Latin America will grow by 1.3% this year, less than half of 2022 figures. Hence, the agency fears another ”lost decade“ like that of the 1980s, with growth too weak, entailing ”loss of opportunities and increased poverty” with already 32.1% of the region's population (201 million people) living in that condition as per ECLAC's assessments, and 13% in extreme poverty(82 million).
Inflation stood at between 8 and 10% in most countries and there were also “extreme cases such as Argentina, which closed the year at almost 100 %,” the official pointed out. “The only good news is that we can already see that the prices of foodstuffs and oil are already at their turning point,” he also noted. Read More…
