The year 2022 was a vintage one for political turmoil in Latin America. Colombia elected a leftwing former guerrilla as president, Chile considered (and rejected) a radical new constitution, Peru’s elected president was impeached and imprisoned pending trial after after a failed attempt to seize extraordinary powers and Brazil’s far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro narrowly lost a bid for re-election.
It was also a record year for foreign direct investment. Investors committed $225bn to Latin America and the Caribbean in 2022, according to ECLAC, the UN’s economic agency for the region. That was 55 per cent more than the previous year and comfortably surpassed the previous peak a decade earlier. Part of the increase was a post-pandemic rebound but the number of future projects announced also rose, though more modestly.
And this:
Brazil was so popular with investors that it became the world’s number five destination for foreign investment last year, behind the US, China, Hong Kong and Singapore, according to Unctad. Brazil is also the top developing economy for international renewable energy investment, according to Unctad, with $115bn in projects.
Here is more from Michael Stott at the FT. Latin America is such a mess it is hard to be flat out optimistic. Yet I feel the highlights, such as southern Brazil and parts of Mexico, are going to surprise people on the upside. Mexico has survived terrible governance, and Colombia is likely to as well. Chile has turned back from the abyss. Argentina may be willing to try something different, even if it doesn’t seem on track to succeed. So these are heady days down south, noting that most of the major problems still have not gone away.
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