Latin America should show economic growth of 4 percent this year, up from 1.5 percent in 2003, as the region is buoyed by strength in the United States and Asia, the head of a UN body said on Thursday.
"We were forecasting growth of 3.5 percent but economic strength in the United States, China, India and Japan are showing us there will be a clear 4 percent growth in the region this year," Jose Machinea, president of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), told reporters.
But Machinea, who was in Lima for the Inter-American Development Bank's annual meeting, said strong growth this year would not wipe out the past six years of low regional expansion, which boosted poverty levels.
"Four percent growth this year does not assure growth in the future," he added.
China and India are growing at a rate of at least 7 percent a year and the United States expanded at an annual rate of 4.1 percent in the last quarter of last year.
An export-led recovery in Argentina - until recently mired in recession and tainted by a massive debt default - is one of the engines of regional growth, ECLAC says.
It expects Argentina and Peru to be the region's star performers this year, expanding by 5.5 percent to 6 percent in the case of Argentina and 4 percent in Peru.
Argentina's economy grew 8.7 percent last year, while Peru's grew 3.97 percent. "Peru is a strange case because it is doing relatively well economically in regional terms, but there is political noise," Machinea said.
Peru's President Alejandro Toledo - whose approval rating is just 9 percent according to polls - is holding on, despite a string of scandals that have cost four ministers and his vice president their jobs since November.
Latin America's biggest economy, Brazil, should expand by 3.8 percent to 4 percent after shrinking 0.2 percent in 2003, while Mexico should increase 3 percent compared with last year's 1.3 percent, Machinea said.
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