Total debt in Latin America and the Caribbean has grown to US$5.8 trillion, or 117 percent of GDP. Public debt soared during the pandemic, and corporates issued substantial amounts to survive the crisis.
While taking on debt helped the region weather the pandemic, it is now weighing down its economy. If countries want to grow and reduce the possibility of a deeper debt crisis, they need to bring down debt to prudent levels.
To achieve prudent debt levels, policymakers can focus on better fiscal institutions, implementing fiscal consolidation, improving debt management, and providing well-targeted assistance to promising private firms.
Events
Jan 26 2023
Dealing With Debt: Less Risk for More Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean
Debt has risen around the world, and Latin America and the Caribbean is no exception. Total debt has grown to US$5.8 trillion, or 117 percent of GDP, for the region and as much as 140 percent of GDP for its five largest economies. Public debt soared to over 70 percent of GDP during the pandemic, and corporates issued substantial amounts to survive the crisis. While the spending that led to this debt helped the region weather the pandemic, it is now weighing down the economy. This book examines the rise in debt in Latin America and the Caribbean and offers recommendations to policymakers to ensure debt is used wisely, avoid the harmful impacts, manage high debt levels well, and bring down debt where it is too high. It is hoped that the analyses and policy suggestions in this volume contribute to successfully confronting the challenges, lowering risk, boosting growth, and improving living standards across the region and beyond.
Trust is the most pressing and yet least discussed problem confronting Latin America and the Caribbean. Whether in others, in government, or in firms, trust is lower in the region than anywhere else in the world. The economic and political consequences of mistrust ripple through society. It suppresses growth and innovation: investment, entrepreneurship, and employment all flourish when firms and government, workers and employers, banks and borrowers, and consumers and producers trust each other.
To close its infrastructure gap, Latin America and the Caribbean needs more than investment in new structures. It needs to become more efficient at investing in infrastructure and regulating a new range of services that have the potential to disrupt the energy, transport, and water sectors. The technological revolution makes a future with quality services possible, but not inevitable.
Thirty years after the region embarked on large-scale liberalization, trade policy could have been expected to become all but irrelevant. Instead, a mismatch between expectations and what could realistically be delivered set the stage for much of the disappointment, skepticism, and fatigue regarding trade policy in the region, particularly in the early 2000s. By setting the bar unrealistically high, governments and analysts made trade policies an easy target for special interests that were hurt by liberalization and for those ideologically opposed to free trade.
How can the puzzle of larger demands and fiscal strengthening be solved? This edition of the Development in the Americas (DIA) report focuses precisely on this question. The book suggests that the answer is about fiscal efficiency and smart spending rather than the standard solution of across-the-board spending cuts to achieve fiscal sustainability— sometimes at great cost for society. It is about doing more with less.
Despite governments’ best efforts, many people in Latin America and the Caribbean don’t have the skills they need to thrive. This book looks at what policies work, and don’t work, so that governments can help people learn better and realize their potential throughout their lifetimes.
Why should people—and economies—save? The typical answer usually focuses on the need to protect against future shocks, to smooth consumption during hard times, in short, to save for the proverbial rainy day. This book approaches the question from a slightly different angle.
Child well-being matters for both ethical and economic reasons as children who flourish in the early years are more likely to become healthy, productive citizens later in life.
Anemic economic growth in Latin America and the Caribbean is in need of a post-Washington-Consensus policy shot in the arm. Unfortunately, the ghost of industrial policy casts a shadow over all efforts because it has often done more harm than good.
More than Revenue aims to provide an up-to-date overview of the current state of taxation in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region, its main reform needs, and possible reform strategies that take into account the likely economic, institutional, and political constraints on the reform process.
This edition of the IDB's flagship publication, Development in the Americas, takes an in-depth look at the opportunities countries have to improve urban housing markets and pave the way for solutions that involve the private sector.
Policymakers and academics agree that computers, the Internet, mobile telephones and other information and communication technologies can be beneficial for economic and social development. But how strong is the impact?
The book provides tools to ponder productivity growth beyond conventional aggregate analysis, focusing on the extreme heterogeneity of sectors and firms while emphasizing the importance of policies that allow high productivity firms to thrive and expand.
Using an enhanced version of the recently created Gallup World Poll, the Inter-American Development Bank surveyed people from throughout the region and found that perceptions of quality of life are often very different from the reality.
Meet the Editors
Andrew Powell
Andrew Powell is the Principal Advisor in the Research Department of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Andrew has a PhD from Oxford, was Chief Economist of the Central Bank of Argentina and has published numerous academic papers in leading journals in several areas including commodity markets, banking and international finance.
Oscar Mauricio Valencia
Oscar Mauricio Valencia is a Lead Specialist in the Fiscal and Municipal Management Division of the IDB. Prior to joining the IDB, Oscar was General Director of Macroeconomic Policy at the Colombian Ministry of Finance. He has served as technical secretary of Colombia’s Independent Committee for Fiscal Rules and member of the boards of directors of several Colombian companies. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Toulouse School of Economics.