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.
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.
Six years after its first barrel, Guyana has the fastest-growing income per head in the world - and has overtaken the United States on the measure.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
The Middle East conflict has landed on Latin America at an awkward moment. After two years of gradual progress bringing inflation under control, the region's central banks now face the prospect of that effort being undone by an external conflict.
From Vaca Muerta to the Orinoco, Latin America is sitting on the world's most coveted untapped crude. The Iran war may finally force it to act.
The IMF raised its 2026 growth forecast for Latin America and the Caribbean by a tenth of a percentage point to 2.3%, while cautioning that the economic consequences of the war in the Middle East will most impact the region's smaller economies.
The World Bank has cut its 2026 growth forecast for Latin America and the Caribbean to 2.1%, down from 2.4% recorded last year, warning that the region faces a toxic combination of weak investment, tight fiscal space, and productivity deficits.
Guyana’s oil-driven economic boom and growing maritime trade may be increasing its exposure to transnational cocaine trafficking networks, as smugglers adjust routes in response to intensified US interdiction efforts in the Caribbean.
Trump launched the “Shield of the Americas” with 12 Latin American leaders in Miami, proposing military action against drug cartels while signalling a broader effort to reassert US influence in the region and counter China.
Extreme weather has led to an explosion of deadly wildfires around the world that are turning forests that should be a CO₂ sink into major sources of additional emissions as the area that burns each year expands.
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Latin America is seeing a rightward political shift, reversing the recent "pink tide" as conservative candidates gain ground in major economies — a development US President Donald Trump is strategically exploiting with carrots and sticks.
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The EU and Latin American nations concluded their fourth summit on November 9 with a 52-point declaration championing multilateralism and containing veiled critiques of US policy.