The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) improved by more than two percentage points the growth projections of the Dominican Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for 2021, estimating the expansion at 7.1%.
For this year, the Dominican GDP will register the fifth-highest growth among Latin American nations, exceeding the 5.0% initially estimated by ECLAC, only surpassed by Guyana (16%), Panama (12%), Peru (9.5%), and Chile (8%).
The agency estimated an average economic growth for the region of 5.2%.
Similarly, the report “The Paradox of Recovery in Latin America and the Caribbean. Growth with persistent structural problems: inequality, poverty, little investment, and low productivity ”, projects that by 2022 the Dominican GDP will register an increase of 5.5%.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused the Latin American economy to experience the largest GDP contraction in 120 years (-6.8%) and to register the worst performance among developing regions, the research shows.
Alicia Bárcena, Executive Secretary of ECLAC, during the presentation of the document, explained that despite the economic rebound that the region will register this year, structural problems of inequality, poverty, low investment and productivity persist, as well as greater environmental deterioration.
The structural problems that limited the region’s growth before the pandemic have worsened and will have a negative impact on the recovery of economic activity and labor markets beyond the rebound in growth of 2021 and 2022. In terms of per capita income, the region continues on a trajectory that leads to a lost decade, the report notes.
Bárcena recommended the reactivation of investments with structural changes in production structures, “because if we do not continue to be trapped in these so-called traps of middle-income countries: low productivity, low taxation, we will not join in technological innovation.”
The pandemic caused the Dominican Republic to be the country, among 11 nations considered, that had the greatest percentage drop in the number of contributors during 2020, a situation that ECLAC warns will have significant negative effects with reductions in benefits and less access to them.
The number of contributors fell by 12.3% (-238,126), followed by Brazil, with 7.0% (-4,128,000), according to the ECLAC investigation.
“The coverage of contributors as a percentage of the working-age population fell two percentage points between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the same quarter of 2020 in the 11 Latin American countries with available information. In the Dominican Republic, the reduction would have reached 3.7 percentage points and in Brazil three percentage points ”, she highlights.
Source:
Diario Libre
