Colombia bucks dismal trend for Latin American economies
Doris Salcedo, winner of the inaugural Nomura Art Award
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Gideon Long in Bogotá
When the IMF ran the rule over Latin America last month, it decided it needed to be far less bullish about growth forecasts for all of the region’s biggest economies — except one.
Colombia, the fund said, was still on track to grow 3.4 per cent in 2019 — easily the highest for the region’s big six economies. And while the IMF made big cuts to forecasts from Brazil to Mexico for 2020, it only shaved its estimate for Colombia by one-tenth of a percentage point to 3.6 per cent — which would still be the country’s best growth rate since 2014.
The relatively sanguine prognosis emphasises that while other Latin American economies have succumbed to popular protests, fallout from the US-China trade war and political turbulence, Colombia has remained remarkably resilient, driven mostly by domestic demand.
