Can Latin America meet growth expectations?

Welcome to “Number of the Week,” where we choose a single figure that helps understand what is going on in Brazil. This week’s number is the World Bank’s expected GDP growth rate for Latin America:

3.7%

growth in 2021

As the coronavirus spread around the world, Latin America quickly became the pandemic’s epicenter. Though the region is home to less than 10 percent of the global population, it has recorded nearly 20 percent of confirmed Covid-19 cases. Furthermore, low testing rates and the high prevalence of positive tests in numerous countries — notably Brazil and Mexico — suggest that the real health impact of the coronavirus in the region is significantly underreported.

According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the region’s GDP dropped 7.7 percent last year. Indeed, this skid would have been much more pronounced if it wasn’t for Brazil’s coronavirus emergency salary program, which prevented millions in the region’s largest economy from falling below the extreme poverty line.

For this year, the...