The year 2020 closed with the worst economic crisis in Latin American history. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has estimated that the region’s GDP fell by 7.7 percent. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), this is one of the worst crises in the world, similar in magnitude to that of Western Europe and surpassed only by that experienced by India. The projections of all international organizations and private analysts also indicate that the region’s economy will only partially recover in 2021. As economic growth during the quinquennium prior to the current crisis was close to zero, Latin America is immersed in a new lost decade, 2015-2024, which may be worse than that of the 1980s. In addition, the COVID-19 crisis has deepened a long period of slow economic growth: 2.7 percent per year in 1990-2019 versus 5.5 percent in 1950-1980. This is the poorest performance of any developing region in the world in the past three decades.
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