Some 7.8 million people are at risk of falling into food insecurity in Latin America and the Caribbean due to inflation and the slowdown in economic growth, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) estimated on Monday.
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That figure would be added to the 86.4 million people in this situation in the region. “This is only taking into account inflation and growth. If you add that it hits women much harder, the informal sectors, that there are no resources to improve socially, (then) the impact of the situation could be even greater,” said the interim secretary general of ECLAC, Mario Cimoli.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), food insecurity puts a person at risk of not having access to “enough foodsafe and nutritious foods that meet your daily energy needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.
ECLAC presented this Monday in Santiago its report “Repercussions in Latin America and the Caribbean of the war in Ukraine: how to face this new crisis?”, in which it also updates data on poverty and extreme poverty in the region after the emergence of this conflict after the coronavirus pandemic.
Poverty would go from 29.8 percent in 2018 to 33.7 percent in 2022 and in the case of extreme poverty, the increase would be from 10.4 percent in 2018 to 14.9 percent this year, with emphasis on Mexico, Colombia, Brazil and Paraguay.
Cimoli clarified that “what is happening now is a process of different ‘shocks’, crisis sequences and a cumulative process” that began with the global financial debacle of 2008, continued with the political tensions between the United States and China in 2019, the coronavirus pandemic from 2020 and currently the war in Ukraine.
Growth down, prices up
The Latin America and Caribbean region grew 6.3% in 2021, in full economic recovery from the pandemic.
The projection falls for 2022 to 1.8%, 0.3 percentage points less than forecast last Januaryand “tends to return to the slow growth pattern of 2014-2019,” the report notes.
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“There is a heterogeneous response (from the countries) with a very strong downward trend in estimates,” said the interim secretary. The Caribbean stands out with a projection of a 10.1% increase in GDP driven by Guyana (13%) and Saint Lucia (10.5%). Growth in Central America is estimated at 4.2%.
In the case of South America, the figure is 1.5%, with Venezuela (5%) and Colombia (4.8%) in the lead. Regional inflation, which follows the world trend, will go from 6.6% in 2021 to 8.1% in 2022, the report indicates.
The increase in poverty “reflects the sharp rise in food prices,” says Cepal. “These levels are notoriously higher than those observed before the pandemic and imply another setback in the fight against poverty” in the region, she adds.
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