The Dominican Republic is expected to grow 5.2% at the end of this year, the highest growth rate among the 20 Latin American countries according to forecasts by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
It estimates this growth increase to be 2.8 percentage points more if compared to January-December 2023, whose GDP growth rate was 2.4%. And by 2025, ECLAC forecasts that the Dominican gross domestic product growth will be 4.5%.
Other countries that would lead the growth figures this year would be: Argentina with 4 %; Costa Rica 3.8 % and Honduras and Paraguay with 3.6 %. And of the 13 Caribbean countries analyzed, Guyana continues to top the list with growth of 29.2% by 2024.
ECLAC’s Economic Survey 2024 projects that Latin America and the Caribbean will remain on a low growth trajectory this year, at an average rate of 1.8%. This slow growth would be observed in all sub-regions, with South America growing by 1.5%; Central America and Mexico by 2.2%; and the Caribbean (excluding Guyana) by 2.6%. By 2025, growth of 2.3% is expected for the region as a whole, an upturn that would be explained, in particular, by the performance of South America (which will reach 2.4%).
ECLAC released today a new edition of its annual report Economic Survey of Latin America and the Caribbean 2024: Low Growth Trap, Climate Change and Employment Dynamics, in which it emphasizes that the region remains stuck in a low growth trap accompanied by poor investment performance and low labor productivity, coupled with little domestic space to implement reactivation macroeconomic policies and global uncertainty.
According to the report, over the course of the last decade, Latin American countries have exhibited low economic growth, with an average rate of 0.9% in the 2015-2024 period. For this reason, the report points out that energizing growth constitutes a primary task for the region to respond to the environmental, social and labor challenges it is currently facing.
“Tackling the growth trap, increasing employment and creating higher productivity jobs requires the strengthening of productive development policies that are complemented by macroeconomic, labor, and climate change adaptation and mitigation policies,” emphasized the Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs.
Source:Listindiario.com
