On the road to recovery

The outlook for Latin America is improving and we expect economic growth to accelerate over the next year. The latest political crisis to engulf Brazil has cast fresh doubts over the outlook there but the early signs suggest that this is unlikely to prevent the economy from recovering. Likewise, Mexico’s economy is holding up reasonably well despite continued uncertainty over relations with the US and we think growth will beat consensus expectations this year. Finally, while the Andean economies of Chile, Peru and Colombia have weakened since the start of this year, a combination of looser monetary policy and, in some cases, fiscal support, should help to revive growth over the second half of 2017. All told, we expect regional GDP to grow by 1.5% this year and 2.5% in 2018.