Sunday, November 18, 2007

OECD report on Latn America - 7 November 2007

This is the first time OECD has brought out a report "Latin American Economic Outlook". From now on, they plan to bring out an annual report. Mexico is a member of OECD since 1994 and Chile is in the process of joining.

Highlights of the report:
- Latin America is showing the world a face with new attractive features: more stability in its macroeconomic fundamentals and greater pragmatism in policy and instituitional reform.
-Consistently positive growth rates and democratic stability are now the norms in the region, rather than the exception. Pragmatism has replaced as the guide for governments for sustained economic development instead of dogma.
- Latin America leads the developing world in pension reforms. Of course, Chile was the pioneer and role model for the reforms in the region.

What struck me in the report ( in the introduction itself) is the new link between China-India and Latin America. In fact, they have one separate chapter with the title " Latin America's Asian opportunity." They have concluded that the two Asian giants represent trade opportunities rather than competition for majority of the Latin American countries. Secondly, they show India-China as examples to follow by the Latin Americans in terms of growth, innovation and global competitivity.

It has now become a standard feature of any report on latin america to talk about the linkage to India and and China.

The report has the views of Javier Santiso, the chief development economist of OECD,who wrote the book "The political economy of the emerging markets". I agree with his analysis and optimism. My blog review of his book:

http://latinamericanaffairs.blogspot.com/search?q=the+political+economy+of+the+possible )

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