Latin America and the Caribbean will grow 2.2% this year, slightly below the 2.4% recorded in 2025, the World Bank said on October 6.
An extreme El Niño event could wipe at least 2% off Latin America and the Caribbean's gross domestic product over three years and push as many as 4.8mn more people into poverty by the end of the decade, ECLAC said in a new report.
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The US State Department has notified Congress that it will redirect $52mn in foreign military financing away from Slovakia, North Macedonia, Tunisia and Iraq and towards Panama, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia.
The United States has removed Venezuela from its list of countries deemed to have "failed demonstrably" to combat drug trafficking, the first time Caracas has come off that designation since 2005.
The US Secretary of State pledged $45mn more in security funding for Ecuador and designated the gang Los Tiguerones a terrorist group in Quito, as Washington doubles down on ties with the region's Trump-aligned governments.
Latin America and the Caribbean's economy will grow 2.2% in 2026, unchanged from ECLAC's earlier forecast, before picking up to 2.5% in 2027, as high informality and weak investment continue to cripple the region's growth potential, the UN body says.
Latin America's insurtech sector attracted $90mn in investment during the first half of 2026, while the number of active companies climbed to 576, a 14% increase from a year earlier and the highest level since 2023, according to a new report.
Ecuador has emerged as one of the world's most important logistics hubs for cocaine trafficking, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which published its World Drug Report 2026 in late June.
Latin America's ongoing shift to the right across a wave of presidential elections is reinforcing a constructive outlook for the region's economies, according to BMI, Fitch Solutions' research unit.
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Latin American economies face renewed inflationary pressure and possible delays to interest rate cuts if a strong El Niño weather pattern disrupts food production, electricity generation and infrastructure this year, Swiss bank UBS said in a note.
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The war between the US, Israel and Iran will continue to weigh on Latin American and Caribbean economies for the rest of 2026, even if last month's fragile ceasefire holds, the UN's regional economic body has warned.
The International Monetary Fund has cut its forecast for global economic growth in 2026 to 3%, citing the fallout from the war in the Middle East, while projecting that Latin America and the Caribbean would grow 2.4% this year and 2.7% in 2027.
Argentina's Milei ghosted the 68th Mercosur summit in Luque to avoid facing Lula after hosting Flávio Bolsonaro in Buenos Aires, as Paraguay fought to stop Buenos Aires from hoarding EU export quotas. The bloc's unity is eroding in real time.
The United Nations special rapporteur on human rights defenders has urged Ecuador to conduct a swift, thorough and independent investigation into the death of Monika Silva Koniuszek.
The World Bank has trimmed its growth forecasts for Latin America and the Caribbean for both 2026 and 2027, blaming the inflationary and monetary fallout from the Middle East conflict.
The 10 most neglected crises for the year include Colombia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Honduras, Ecuador, Cameroon, Nigeria and Mozambique, “spanning three continents and tens of millions of people the world continues to ignore”.
Latin America and the Caribbean's political systems are experiencing a gradual institutional decay that rarely manifests as outright democratic collapse but instead hollows out governance from within, the UNDP has warned in a new report.
Argentina remains by far the largest debtor to the International Monetary Fund, underscoring the depth of its long-running financial crisis and its dependence on multilateral support.
One way to measure income inequality is to look at the share of all income that goes to the top income earners. The chart plots this for all seven South American countries with comparable 2022 pre-tax income estimates.
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ECLAC trims Latin America's 2026 growth forecast to 2.2%, warning that soaring oil prices, tighter credit and slowing global trade are locking the region into a fourth consecutive year of sluggish expansion.