The World Bank has raised its economic growth estimates for Latin America and the Caribbean to 1.4% in 2023 even as economic growth in the region remains the slowest in the world, and a World Bank spokesman pointed to the region’s success in combating inflation by moving early to tighten interest rates to higher estimates.
“Lowering interest rates, as Brazil and Chile have begun to do, will allow Latin American countries to grow faster during the rest of the year,” the spokesman said, noting that the region’s debt-to-output ratio has fallen to 64% this year from 67% a year ago, but remains higher than the 57% reached in 2019. With interest rates rising in developed markets and expectations that they will remain higher for some time, the ratio indicates that the cost of servicing this debt is increasing.
Some Latin American countries are moving towards digitization in order to overcome the economic crisis and combat inflation, as the Argentine presidential election candidate, Sergio Massa, proposed the first legal digital currency in Argentina and supported by the central bank, in the midst of presenting economic ideas during the first presidential debate in preparation for the Argentine elections, the Argentine newspaper infopay said.
Sergio Massa said that “Argentina is facing enormous difficulties, today I want to tell you how we will solve them, and we will distinguish the digital currency of Argentina in the first place to face those difficulties”.
“Just as your children propose in their economy platform the possibility of trading using their mobile phones or cards, we will do it in a global way in Argentina,”said the former Argentine economy minister. However, he did not provide further details on the implementation of this procedure in this regard.
He also stressed that whoever adopts this new currency will receive a tax cut, and it will be “the same” that will be made available to the beneficiaries of the money laundering law, which has already been submitted to Congress to address it.
