What a difference a year makes. A year ago, at the Inter-American Development Bank’s 45th annual meeting of the board of governors in Peru, the talk was of a modest recovery after five years of stagnation. Latin America and the Caribbean had grown by 1.5% in 2003, an incipient rebound that was in welcome contrast to the contraction of the previous year. Yet, the mood was still cautious, reflecting the fragility of the revival.
A year later, on the opposite side of the world in Okinawa, Japan, there was an altogether different tone to the bank’s 46th annual meeting. Its governors – finance ministers and central bank governors – were able to crow about growth of 5.7% across the region, easily outstripping the most optimistic forecasts a year earlier and the fastest expansion since 1980. With the exception of Haiti, every Latin American and Caribbean country recorded positive growth, pushing aggregate per capita income up more than 4%, in contrast to a cumulative 1.7% decline over the previous five years. And for the first time in several years the unemployment rate in the region fell.
