2. General Trends Controlling Transport Growth and Demand
Following an initial surge, economic growth in Latin America and the Caribbean has been slowing since 2011, and the data available for the first six months of 2014 indicate that the region will not match the growth rate of 2.5 per cent recorded in 2013. A regional growth rate of 2.2 per cent was forecasted for 2014 (UNECLAC, 2014a13). Despite the periods of sustainable growth for a number of countries in the first decade of the 2000s, the overall growth performance of the UNECLAC region in the past thirty years has not been so encouraging. The region performed poorly in the three decades between 1980 and 2012, at least from the perspective of much of the Latin American and Caribbean population. The average annual gain in per capita GDP during these 32 years has been less than 2 per cent for 91.7 per cent of the population, and less than 1 per cent for 32.0 per cent. For a large number of countries, economic growth was insufficient to produce convergence with the per capita GDP of developed countries. Very importantly, income distribution in the region continues to be highly unequal. In Latin America, the richest 10 per cent of the population capture 32 per cent of total income, while the poorest 40 per cent receives only 15 per cent. Inequality levels are lower in the Caribbean. Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean in the past three decades shows the heavy influence of external conditions. Long periods of limited access to external financial resources, crises in large economies in the region and beyond, and negative turns of events in export markets leading to terms-of-trade deterioration, have almost always slowed growth and, in certain instances, have led output to fall outright. Although the region showed significant resilience during the global financial crisis, thanks to its capacity to implement countercyclical policies and rapidly regain access to international financial markets, external variability continued to slow down its growth (UNECLAC, 2013). Figure 2.6
Latin America and the Caribbean: GDP growth and terms of trade14, 1970–2012 (percentage)
10.00% 8.00% 6.00% 4.00% 2.00% 0.00% -2.00% -4.00% -6.00% -8.00%
GDP growth
2012
2010
2008
2006
2004
2002
2000
1998
1996
1994
1992
1990
1988
1986
1984
1982
1980
1978
1976
1974
1972
1970
-10.00% Variation in terms of trade
Source: UNECLAC, 2013
13
Available from www.cepal.org/publicaciones/xml/1/53391/EconomicSurvey2014.pdf (accessed May 2015)
The relative price of exports in terms of imports and is defined as the ratio of export prices to import prices. It can be interpreted as the amount of import goods an economy can purchase per unit of export goods. 14
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