Guyana to lead regional growth next year
Alicia Bárcena, ECLAC Executive Secretary
Alicia Bárcena, ECLAC Executive Secretary

…ECLAC predicts 85.5% growth on the back of oil production

THE Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has forecasted a staggeringly high growth rate for Guyana for next year, while modest growth in other Caribbean economies.

In its Preliminary economic Overview of the Caribbean released on Thursday, ECLAC noted that Guyana’s growth rate is pegged at 4.5 per cent for this year, while next year it will be 85.5 per cent. This prediction was also made earlier this year by the International Monetary Fund and is premised on the country entering to oil production which will commence this month. The commission said too that the Guyana Government will receive approximately 14.5 per cent of all oil revenue in 2020.

Meanwhile, Alicia Bárcena, ECLAC Executive Secretary, in presenting the overview, said the economic overview for Latin America and the Caribbean in 2019 is occurring in a particularly complex context. The Region, she said, is exhibiting an economic deceleration that is widespread and synchronised among countries and sectors, topping off six consecutive years of low growth.

The United Nations regional organisation indicates that the deceleration in domestic demand is being accompanied by low external aggregate demand and more fragile international financial markets. This context is compounded by growing social demands and pressure to reduce inequality and increase social inclusion. In this way, the macroeconomic situation in recent years shows a deceleration trend in economic activity, with a reduction in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, a decline in investment, lower consumption per capita, fewer exports, and a sustained deterioration in the quality of employment.
All of this will lead to the Region growing just 0.1 per cent on average in 2019, and growth projections for 2020 will remain low at around 1.3 per cent for the Region as a whole. As a result, the 2014-2020 period will mark the lowest growth in the last seven decades for the economies of Latin America and the Caribbean.

“Given this scenario, the Region cannot withstand adjustment policies and needs policies to stimulate growth and reduce inequality. The current conditions require that fiscal policy be centered on the reactivation of growth and on responding to growing social demands,” stated Alicia Bárcena, Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), at the presentation of the document.

The report emphasises that an active fiscal policy requires in the medium-to-long term a strategy to ensure its sustainability over time. This implies that it must be linked to growth capacity and productivity dynamics, and to strengthening the State’s capacity for revenue collection (improving the progressive nature of the tax structure through an increase in direct taxes; reducing tax evasion, which represents around 6.3 per cent of regional GDP; re-evaluating tax expenditures, which represent 3.7 per cent of GDP in the Region; and implementing a new generation of taxes related to the digital economy, the environment and public health).

In terms of growth projections, according to the report, 23 of 33 Latin American and Caribbean countries (and 18 out of 20 in Latin America) will see their growth decelerate during 2019, while 14 nations will record an expansion of one per cent or less by year’s end.

Furthermore, the report verifies that the Region’s GDP per capita will have contracted four per cent between 2014 and 2019. Meanwhile, national unemployment will rise from eight per cent in 2018 to 8.2 per cent in 2019, which amounts to an increase of one million people, reaching a new maximum of 25.2 million. This situation is compounded by a deterioration in job quality due to growth in self-employment (which exceeded salaried employment) and in labor informality.

GREATEST EXPANSION
The Preliminary Overview forecasts that in 2019 the country with the greatest expansion will be Dominica (nine per cent), followed by Antigua and Barbuda (6.2 per cent), the Dominican Republic (4.8 per cent) and Guyana (4.5 per cent). In contrast, Venezuela will experience the greatest setback, with a contraction of -25.5 per cent, followed by Nicaragua (-5.3 per cent), Argentina (-3.0 per cent) and Haiti (-0.7 per cent). Central America will grow 2.4 per cent, the Caribbean 1.4 per cent and South America will contract -0.1 per cent.

For 2020, ECLAC’s projections indicate that Caribbean nations will continue leading regional growth (with a sub-regional average of 5.6 per cent), led by Guyana (85.6 per cent, due to oil production starting in 2020), Antigua and Barbuda (6.5 per cent), Dominica (4.9 per cent) and the Dominican Republic (4.7 per cent). On the low end of the spectrum, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Argentina will have more moderate economic contraction rates (with -14 per cent, -1.4 per cent and -1.3 per cent, respectively). Meanwhile, Central America will expand 2.6 per cent and South America 1.2 per cent.

According to the report, despite the difficulties and limitations that policy spaces currently face, in contrast to prior periods, the majority of the Region’s countries find themselves today in situations of historically low inflation levels (a 2.6 per cent regional average, without taking into account Venezuela, Argentina and Haiti), relatively high international reserves, the economies generally preserve access to international financial markets, and international interest rates are at low levels. These conditions favor the capacity to implement macroeconomic policies that would tend to reverse the current low-growth scenario. To that end, it is critical to reactivate economic activity through greater public spending on investment and social policies, ECLAC indicates. In addition, to address social demands, short-term redistributive efforts must be complemented with an increase in the provision and quality of public goods and services, the commission underscored.

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