The volume of world merchandise trade has fallen precipitously in the first half of 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the global economy. Leading indicators provide clues about the extent of the slowdown and how it compares with earlier crises.

This Policy Brief focuses on the vital role of biodiversity for human life and the importance of integrating biodiversity considerations into the recovery from the COVID-19 crisis. The Brief first outlines how biodiversity loss is a key driver of emerging infectious diseases and poses a variety of other growing risks to businesses, society and the global economy. Investing in the conservation, sustainable use and restoration of biodiversity can help to address these risks, while providing jobs, business opportunities and other benefits to society.

The digital economy has finally arrived. During the mid-1990s, technology enthusiasts predicted that the rapid spread of the internet and super-computing would generate new efficiencies, innovations and economies of scale. But the promised revolution in e-business and e-commerce stalled when the dot-com bubble burst. Since then, however, the world's digital footprint has increased exponentially. Today, global IP traffic is almost 150,000 GB per second compared to 100 GB per day three decades ago. Ubiquitous data and connectivity – around 60 zettabytes are anticipated in 2020 and almost three times as much by 2025 – is powering the new economy. The spread of cloud computing, artificial intelligence and billions of digitally connected devices are taking things to an entirely new level. These trends have only accelerated since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

En este Resumen del informe Perspectivas económicas de América Latina 2020 (LEO 2020 por sus siglas en inglés) se analiza cómo la transformación digital puede ayudar a la región a enfrentar estos tiempos difíciles. La pandemia del COVID-19 está teniendo un profundo impacto en las condiciones socioeconómicas de América Latina y el Caribe, acentuando un escenario ya muy complejo debido a las debilidades estructurales existentes en la región. Esta crisis sin precedentes llega en un momento de altas aspiraciones de la sociedad y refuerza la necesidad de transformar el modelo de desarrollo de la región. El informe explora cómo la transformación digital puede ayudar a hacer frente a la situación socioeconómica actual, impulsar la productividad, fortalecer las instituciones y lograr niveles más altos de inclusión y bienestar. El LEO 2020 también destaca el papel clave que las alianzas internacionales tienen para aprovechar los beneficios de la transformación digital.

The COVID-19 crisis will dramatically increase the poverty rate for women and widen the gap between men and women who live in poverty, according to new data released today by UN Women and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The poverty rate for women was expected to decrease by 2.7 percent between 2019 and 2021, but projections now point to an increase of 9.1 percent due to the pandemic and its fallout.

Con hasta 100 millones más de personas que son arrastradas a la pobreza extrema en 2020, 1,4 mil millones de niños y niñas afectados por el cierre de escuelas y un desempleo récord, COVID-19 es un gran impedimento para el progreso humano. El PNUD ha predicho que el desarrollo humano mundial va camino de retroceder este año por primera vez desde que se introdujo el concepto.

For example, during the pandemic, American Eagle Outfitters deployed robots to help it sort clothes in its warehouses to meet a surge of online orders, and IBM saw a surge in new customers in the second quarter of 2020 for its AI-driven Watson Assistant, a platform for deploying chatbots and other customer services.3 Use of such technologies allows contactless customer interaction in a period when human contact is discouraged and builds resilience by limiting reliance on virus-susceptible employees. Providers of cloud services, such as Amazon and Alibaba, have announced plans to markedly step up investment in cloud services, an indication that they expect increased demand related to changes in the workplace post-COVID

International human mobility has been drastically reduced, with border closures and travel restrictions of unprecedented scale. With a few exceptions, almost all countries have restricted international mobility. As they contemplate removing internal restrictions and reopening borders, states are confronted with a high level of uncertainty and one common challenge: how to resume cross-border mobility while safeguarding global public health?

At 94 per cent, the overall share of workers residing in countries with workplace closures of some sort remains high. The share of workers in countries with required closures for all but essential workplaces across the entire economy or in targeted areas is still significant, though there are large regional variations. Among uppermiddle-income countries, around 70 per cent of workers continue to live in countries with such strict lockdown measures in place (whether nationwide or in specific geographical areas), while in low-income countries, the earlier strict measures have been relaxed considerably, despite increasing numbers of COVID-19 cases

La pandemia del coronavirus (COVID-19) llegó a América Latina y el Caribe en un momento de vulnerabilidad macroeconómica. A pesar de las medidas extraordinarias y, a menudo, sin precedentes, introducidas en todo el mundo, el daño causado por la crisis del COVID-19 a los mercados laborales es enorme y deja a los responsables de la formulación de políticas frente a importantes desafíos políticos. La recuperación durante el resto de este año será lenta e incompleta y, en gran medida, dependerá de las decisiones que se tomen, así como de la trayectoria futura de la pandemia. El mundo saldrá de esta situación con mayores niveles de desempleo, desigualdad, pobreza, deuda y presión social. Por lo que el proceso de recuperación representará un inmenso desafío para los países, en donde será indispensable el apoyo de la comunidad internacional. En este escenario no se puede perder la oportunidad de, esta vez, reconstruir mejor, en lugar de reconstruir como siempre, con los mismos límites de siempre.

La pandemia de COVID-19 ha empujado los niveles de deuda hasta nuevos máximos. En comparación con finales de 2019, se proyecta que los coeficientes de endeudamiento promedio en 2021 aumenten un 20% del PIB en las economías avanzadas, un 10% del PIB en las economías de mercados emergentes y aproximadamente un 7% en los países de bajo ingreso. Estos incrementos se suman a unos niveles de deuda que ya son históricamente altos. Si bien muchas economías avanzadas todavía tienen capacidad de endeudamiento, los países de mercados emergentes y los de bajo ingreso afrontan limitaciones mucho más restrictivas de su capacidad de contraer nuevas deudas.

As in other economic downturns, the pandemic has reduced state and local revenues, but this time is different. Declines in income tax revenues are likely to be smaller than projections based on historical experience because employment losses have been unusually concentrated on low-wage workers (who pay less income taxes than higher-wage workers), the stock market has held up so far (sustaining taxes on capital gains), and the federal government has increased and expanded unemployment insurance benefits and grants to business, which will shore up taxable income. On the other hand, declines in sales and other taxes and fees are larger than historical experience would suggest, because consumption has fallen so sharply and people are staying home—meaning that revenues from taxes and fees on hotels, tolls, airports, and motor fuel have plummeted.

The purpose of the tracker is to assess the gender sensitivity of these measures. It is based on publicly available information, including official government documents, media coverage, and existing policy repositories that track government responses to COVID-19. Data on measures was also provided by UNDP and UN Women country offices. The tracker assesses the available information on the design features of policy measures. It does not conduct assessment of the gender impact of these measures, nor does it make a ranking of countries based on their policy responses.

For the global payments sector, the events of 2020 have reset expectations and significantly accelerated several existing trends. The COVID-19 public- health crisis and its many repercussions—among them, government measures to protect citizens and rapid changes in consumer behavior—changed the operating environment for businesses, large and small, around the world. For the payments sector, global revenues declined by an estimated 22 percent in the first six months of the year compared with the same period in 2019. We expect revenues to recover (only to a degree) in the second half of 2020, ending 7 percent lower than full-year 2019. Over the past several years, payments revenues had grown by roughly 7 percent annually, which means this crisis leaves revenues 11 to 13 percent below our prepandemic revenue projection for 2020.

Disruptions in services caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have led to further setbacks.  In many countries, human, financial and other resources have been reallocated from TB to the COVID-19 response. Data collection and reporting systems have also been negatively impacted.

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.

El trastorno económico y social causado por la pandemia es devastador en todo el mundo, pero especialmente en los países en desarrollo o con crisis humanitarias. El coronavirus ha dejado millones de enfermos, decenas de millones de personas en riesgo de caer en la pobreza extrema y el desempleo, un aumento sin precedentes de la desnutrición, y ha irrumpido en los sistemas alimentarios, afectando desde agricultores hasta consumidores.

The Organization of American States (OAS) is partnering with WhatsApp Business to provide micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in Latin America and the Caribbean access to digital tools and customized training on WhatsApp's Business app, to help them better position themselves in the marketplace.

More than 70 million migrants living across international borders in the Region of the Americas are set to benefit from a joint agreement signed today by Carissa F. Etienne, Director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and António Vitorino, Director General of the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

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.