Economic Policy in Latin America and the Caribbean in the Time of COVID-19

https://blogs.imf.org/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery By Alejandro Werner Español, Português As of today, about 3,000 people have died from the COVID-19 virus in Latin America and the Caribbean. While the pandemic continues to spread across the region, countries are facing the worst economic recession since countries started producing national accounts statistics in the 1950s. The challenging external environment, coupled with much-needed measures to contain the pandemic, have led to a plummeting of economic activity across Latin America—where growth is poised to contract by 5.2 percent in 2020. Given the dramatic contraction in 2020 and as countries implement polices to contain the pandemic and to support their economies—as emphasized in our previous blog—a sharp recovery in 2021 can be expected. Yet, even under this quick recovery scenario, the region faces the specter of another “lost decade” during 2015–25.