Latin America’s forecast: Cloudy

(Photo: Susana Gonzalez – Bloomberg)

In recent days, I interviewed the heads of the Latin American departments of the three main international institutions that track the region’s economy, and what they said threw me into a temporary state of depression.

All three of them — the head of the Latin American departments of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) — said they expect Latin America to show zero growth in 2016. It will be the fifth consecutive year of no growth in the region.

They also agreed that, overall, South America will do badly this year, while Central America and Mexico will do somewhat better.

While South America’s biggest economies will suffer because of their dependence on commodity exports to China, whose economy is slowing down, Central America and Mexico will benefit from their close ties with the United States, where the economy is expected to do well.

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