Brasil, a través del Programa de Emergencia de Acceso a Crédito – el FGI-PEAC, apoyará a las pequeñas y medianas empresas (PyME) frente a la crisis generada por el COVID-19 como sostén del empleo con un préstamo de US$200 millones aprobado por el Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID).

El programa facilitará el acceso de las PyME al crédito por medio de la concesión de garantías y así contribuir a que las firmas puedan superar problemas temporales de liquidez, dar continuidad a sus operaciones y fortalecer su sostenibilidad financiera.

ECLAC’s Executive Secretary participated in a regional conference organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Argentina and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany, focused on the prospects for triangular cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean. El Diálogo Virtual: Desafíos en la protección de las personas mayores y sus derechos frente a la pandemia por COVID-19 fue un espacio de reflexión e intercambio de experiencias regionales sobre sus impactos en la población mayor.

ECLAC’s Executive Secretary participated in a regional conference organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Argentina and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany, focused on the prospects for triangular cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean.

ECLAC launched its Economic Survey of Latin America and the Caribbean 2020, an annual report in which it reaffirms that international cooperation, through better distribution of global liquidity, must underpin the expansion of policy space in the region.

The ALIDE General Assembly will bring the Development Bank System of Latin America and the Caribbean to evaluate in a digital meeting the performance in mitigating the COVID-19 crisis and the path to economic recovery. High level representatives from the financial institutions will discuss the various experiences faced during the pandemic.

The ALIDE General Assembly will bring the Development Bank System of Latin America and the Caribbean to evaluate in a digital meeting the performance in mitigating the COVID-19 crisis and the path to economic recovery. High level representatives from the financial institutions will discuss the various experiences faced during the pandemic.

Caribbean micro, small and medium-sized businesses, operated by youth and women, are preparing and building capacities to enable them to profit from international and intraregional trade in the aftermath of the pandemic.

The impact of the pandemic in the Caribbean has brought to light the urgency of moving away from training based on generic concepts, with a business planning and food processing-related focus, towards specialized, applied training, tailored to the current situation.

La máxima representante de la CEPAL intervino en la Sesión I: La recuperación económica post COVID-19 y el futuro del contrato social en las Américas, junto a Joseph E. Stiglitz, Premio Nobel de Economía y Profesor de la Universidad de Columbia; Carmen Reinhart, Vicepresidenta y Economista Jefe del Grupo del Banco Mundial; Rebeca Grynspan, Secretaria General Iberoamericana (SEGIB), y Paula Santilli, Directora Ejecutiva de PepsiCo Latinoamérica. El panel fue moderado por Luis Felipe López Calva, Director Regional para América Latina y el Caribe del Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD).

The program will finance special money transfers to households that hold the Uruguay Social Card (Tarjeta Uruguay Social in Spanish) and people that benefit from the Equity Plan Family Allocations (Asignaciones Familiares-Plan Equidad). As part of this effort, the plan will also support the creation of a One-Stop Digital Window designed to improve the efficiency of selecting and recertifying those who receive such money transfers.

The Uruguay Social Card seeks to guarantee basic access to food and other essentials for people living in extreme poverty. Equity Plan Family Allocations provide economic assistance to complement the income of families that live in precarious conditions and are raising children. They also seek to keep children in school and provide incentives to ensure that they get health check-ups.

La Comisión Interamericana de Mujeres (CIM) de la Organización de los Estados Americanos (OEA), con la cooperación de la Unión Europea a través de su programa EUROsociAL+, presenta y pone a disposición de los Estados Miembros de la OEA, de organizaciones de la sociedad civil y sector privado el documento “COVID-19 en la vida de las mujeres: Emergencia global de los cuidados”, en respuesta a la profundización de la desigualdad en la distribución de las tareas domésticas y de cuidado y al incremento de la carga de trabajo no remunerado que están realizando las mujeres. El texto analiza el rol de las mujeres en el funcionamiento de la vida doméstica y productiva y los impactos en sus vidas y en la economía.

With the goal of boosting the response capacity of the Nicaraguan health care system, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) reiterates its support to the country providing USD$43 million from its Immediate Response of Public Health to Contain and Control Coronavirus and Mitigate its Effect on the Provision of the Service in Nicaragua. The actions of the program will contribute to reduce the rates of morbidity and mortality from the coronavirus and ease the indirect health care effects of the pandemic, with special emphasis on the most vulnerable populations. The project will focus on three areas: boosting detection and monitoring of COVID-19 cases, strengthening efforts to break the chain of transmission of the disease, and enhancing the country's ability to provide services.

The program will help organize and more efficiently execute policies and programs that support government priorities for crisis management and preparing for economic recovery in response to the impacts of COVID-19. In addition, it will improve the management and performance of priority government policies with a direct impact on the services provided to citizens.

In this sense, it will focus on the quality of planning, monitoring, decision-making and evaluation of strategic government programs, and will contribute to strengthening innovation capacities and promoting innovative practices on public policies in public administration, with the participation of the private sector and civil society.

Entre los principales hallazgos destacan que, dentro de la región andina, las empresas de Perú y Colombia se encontraban mejor posicionadas para enfrentar el choque del COVID-19, mientras que las de Ecuador y Bolivia estaban menos preparadas.  En todos los casos, las empresas grandes y medianas son las que tenían mayor preparación, en comparación con las pequeñas y, sobre todo, con las microempresas debido a diferencias importantes en aspectos como el acceso a crédito, el uso de tecnologías, la propiedad del espacio en el que operan, el peso de los costos fijos y la productividad laboral.

Alicia Bárcena, the head of ECLAC, the UN body for the region – together with the Caribbean - who worked with Maya communities early in her career, is concerned by the health risks faced by indigenous people, as well as poverty in Latin America, which is rising, following years of progress.

“This conversation was an important opportunity to discuss how the Caribbean will build back better from the COVID-19 crisis. We heard about timely and comprehensive social protection interventions by the region’s governments – many with the support of the private sector – to address economic hardship and job losses, as well as initiatives to support families. At UN Women, we are committed to continuing to support the Governments and the people of the Caribbean in developing policies and programmes that address the needs of women, both in the private sector and in the informal sector, to ensure no one is left behind in the rebuilding of the region’s economies,” said Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director of UN Women.

Rebeca Grynspan, Ibero-American Secretary General (SEGIB), and Cassio Luiselli, member of the Advisory Council for Food Security in the Americas, discussed these scenarios and proposed adequate responses for strengthening cooperation between countries and mitigating the effects of the pandemic.

They noted that, in order to drive economic reactivation and food security in the Latin American and Caribbean region, it will be necessary to capitalize on the potential of multilateralism, maintain the flow of goods, minimize trade barriers, foster production chains with greater value added, improve food marketing and distribution, and strengthen family farming.

Alicia Bárcena (warned) that the region is at risk of experiencing a true food crisis. She specified that more than 96 million people will be living in extreme poverty – 11.8% of all people living in cities and 29% of the residents in rural areas.

“This is a huge warning, the income of households is declining along with their access to the food basket. It is not that there is a shortage of food, it is that people do not have the resources to be able to acquire it. This comes on top of the low nutritional quality that people are experiencing, above all the poorest families,”.

El Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID) aprobó un préstamo de US$130 millones para apoyar la sostenibilidad financiera de corto plazo de las Micro, Pequeñas y Medianas Empresas (MiPyME) como sostén del empleo en Bolivia frente a la crisis del COVID-19 y sus efectos en el tejido productivo.

El programa espera beneficiar como mínimo a aproximadamente 12.000 MiPyME afectadas por la crisis, mediante créditos que se otorgarán a través de las Instituciones Financieras elegibles, destinándose un monto superior al 30 por ciento del total de los recursos a empresas propiedad de mujeres.

New analysis from the World Economic Forum shows that some of Latin America’s and the Caribbean’s tourism strengths are less important than before to a competitive tourism economy during COVID-19. The onset and spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted the factors that make a country’s travel and tourism sector competitive. Certain factors, such as healthcare capacity and digital travel offerings, are increasing in importance during the pandemic. Other factors, like international openness – a primary strength of Latin America – are now less important.

ECLAC’s Special Report COVID-19 No. 5, entitled Addressing the growing impact of COVID-19 with a view to reactivation with equality: new projections, indicates that since both external and domestic shocks have intensified, the region will experience a -9.1% fall in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2020, with drops of -9.4% in South America, -8.4% in Central America and Mexico, and -7.9% in the Caribbean upon excluding Guyana, the strong growth of which prompts a smaller contraction in the subregional total (-5.4%).