Читать книгу Economics of G20 - Группа авторов - Страница 33

The Latin American region has grown very slowly over the past half a century. The average annual growth rate of per capita income at 1.7 is higher than the growth rate of only the Sub-Saharan region. The performance has been particularly poor since the debt crisis broke in 1982. Thus, the region has not been catching up with the high-income countries. There is no convergence within the region either. If anything, the richer countries have shown a weak tendency to grow faster.

Even over the 2001–2015 period, most saw a decline in their growth rates after the onset of the 2008 crisis and then followed by a slight recovery. Only Bolivia, Guyana and Uruguay grew faster after the crisis than they had done earlier, and only Brazil did not experience a recovery over the 2010–2015 period.

The share of GFCF in GDP declined after the onset of the debt crisis and has never recovered to the pre-crisis levels. This share is also much lower than that in the Asian region since the debt crisis. But despite this lower GFCF share, growth has been so much slower that the ICOR of the region and of most countries within the region has been relatively high. The region has experienced a greater integration with the world economy as the share of exports in GDP has doubled over the past half century. The integration with other countries has resulted in an increased correlation between growth rates of the countries of the region and with the outside world. The correlations are particularly high for growth rates with the entire world and with the region itself. The correlation with growth rates in China is also becoming stronger. However, the increase is less than that in other regions, and thus, the ratio of exports to GDP was the lowest for the LAC region in the period 2011–2015. This means that the CAB remains precarious. However, foreign exchange reserves as a share of GDP have continued to grow after the 2008 crisis unlike in many other large countries.

The slow recovery since the crisis, the low rates of investment and the precarious state of the current account all point to continued slow growth for the region. Recovery of the world economy would help. Also, the stronger correlations between the growth rates of the countries and that of the region as a whole suggest that the time may be ripe for a revival of the project for a closer regional integration.