The director of the Western Hemisphere of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Alexander Werner , stated today that “Latin America will probably be the region of the world most affected by Covid-19 , and its citizens on average are literally seeing a lost decade in terms of average per capita income. ”
Werner said, in a virtual forum organized by the Mexican asset management company SURA, that “Latin America’s poverty rate will not return to its pre-pandemic level before 2025 after an increase due to the virus.”
The IMF official indicated that “Mexico’s spending response to the pandemic has been conservative despite the presence of fiscal space,” according to a cable from the Bloomberg agency.
For Werner, “Several governments in Latin America will eventually need to implement fiscal reforms in 2022 and beyond, to support higher spending due to the pandemic or face the probability of eventual downgrades in credit ratings due to higher levels of the debt / GDP ratio. “
