The worst of the global economic crisis is over and Latin America, led by a resilient Brazil, should see its economy grow about 3 percent next year, a World Bank official said on Monday. Augusto de la Torre, the World Bank's chief economist for Latin America and the Caribbean, said the region's economy is still expected to shrink about 2 percent this year, however.
And although Latin America fared relatively well during the crisis over the past year, de la Torre said a sharp drop in economic activity was still taking its toll. Among other reversals for the region, he said, the crisis had added as many as 10 million people to the ranks of Latin America's poor. De la Torre spoke to reporters ahead of an annual meeting in Miami, co-sponsored by the World Bank, on the economic and political outlook for Latin America.
"There is a growing consensus that the worst of the economic crisis is over," he said. In Latin America, as elsewhere, there is still a lot of uncertainty about the sustainability of growth beyond the short term, de la Torre said. He said it was clear that Brazil and other countries with the strongest links to China and Asian markets had already emerged from recession, however. At the same time, in Mexico and countries in Central America and the Caribbean that are most dependent on the United States, the comeback will take longer, de la Torre said.
"It's the emerging countries, the biggest emerging countries that are leading the recovery," he said, adding that this highlighted an important "reconfiguration" of the global economy. "Those (Latin American) countries whose economies are most aligned with China's are coming back before those countries whose economies are more linked to wealthy countries, especially to the United States," he said.
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