Latin America continues to look ahead. The European debt crisis, the US economic slowdown and the Chinese slowdown have failed to crush South America. According to data from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean of the United Nations (CEPAL) the South American continent will record a 2012% increase in gross domestic product in 3,1, almost one point more than the +2,2% expected, but still lower than the 4,3% of 2010.
For 2013 Latin America is expected continue the path towards the return to the standards of a few years ago. Having diversified its export markets and having seen an increase in real wages which allows it to continue to stimulate domestic demand, the region will nonetheless show a growth of 3,8% in 2013. However, Cepal warns, there are still dangers that put the successes achieved at risk: the volatility of foreign investments and of local currencies in the foreign exchange market in primis.
The higher expectations for next year are pouring into the Mexico. The new president of the PRI, Enrique Peña Nieto, who took office on December 2020, announced the beginning of an era of reforms that should lead Mexico to what, according to Noumura and Goldman Sachs, in 10 will be one of the top XNUMX economies largest in the world.
Il Brazil it will have to get back on track to give its best in 2014 when it hosts the soccer World Cup. An unexpected hard blow came in the third quarter: a 0,6% cyclical increase in GDP which led the Central Bank to revise its estimates downwards and to expect overall growth for 2012 even below 1% (for the Cepal +1,2%). President Dilma Rousseff reassured Brazilians by declaring that the effects of economic policy will be seen gradually and that the great leap forward will begin in 2014.
The country with the best performance remains the Perù where an estimated +6% in 2012 (+6,2% in 2013). On the podium of the most prosperous economies too Chile (+5,5%; +4,8%) and Colombia (+4,5% both years). In 2013, of all South America, only Chilean citizens will go to vote: the socialist Michelle Bachelet will challenge the new candidate of the present centre-right government, all surrounded by the demands of the students who for more than a year have mobilized to ask more equal rights. For Bogota, good news could be the peace defined with the FARC guerrillas, which would calm the spirits of that wave of new investors that this year has set its sights (and not only) on Colombia. At the risk of new tensions instead there is the Venezuela (+5,3%; +2,0%), where the precarious conditions of President Hugo Chavez risk causing the country to fall into a dangerous power vacuum.
Last but not least, theArgentina. It was a year of fire for President Cristina Kirchner who, with the nationalization of the Spanish oil company Repsol-Ypf, has aroused many tensions with the old Spanish motherland. The data offered by national bodies continue to be uncertain and many economists are concerned about the country's fiscal situation. According to the Central Bank, if in 2012 GDP grows by 2%, in 2013 there will be a leap up to 4,6%. Cepal is more cautious, which in any case expects +3,9%. All excluding the hypothesis, for now remote, of a new Argentine default, hanging by a thread of a US judge. To strengthen Kirchner, who has recently received quite a few criticisms even from the citizens themselves, could be the result of the referendum of the inhabitants of the Malvinas or Falkland Islands (depending on one's point of view) expected in March 2013. Citizens will decide whether to remain British territory or whether to make Evita's great dream of the XNUMXst century come true.
