At this Conference the President of the CAF, Luis Carranza, made an analysis of the economic cycles that Latin America has gone through in recent decades and the public policy decisions that have enabled them to overcome recessions and reduce poverty levels as has never been seen before in the region. On the 7th September the 20th Edition of the CAF – Development Bank of Latin America – Annual Conference took place in Washington.
In this sense the global and regional development banks are undertaking a key task when it comes to rethinking their role as providers of public policy in the context an increasingly more global economy and a time of continuous technological disruption in which we now live. In recent years this process of political and social change has been accompanied by the impact of digitalisation and globalisation in Latin American companies.Įarlier this year, in a lucid article in the newspaper, El País, Enrique García, former President of the CAF Development Bank of Latin America highlighted the importance of rethinking the impact of globalisation not only in the developing world but also in emerging markets. The adjustment, which follows every expansive period, arrived to the region between 20 coinciding with some noteworthy political realities such as the deaths of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Fidel Castro in Cuba, the end of iconic left-wing governments with special ideological and economical influence in the region, like the governments of Lula (Brazil) and Kirchner (Argentina), or the peace process that was initiated in Colombia. Thanks to the wonderful decade of commodities, unheard of growth rates for the region were achieved between 20, thus recovering part of the time lost in the previous two decades. The beginning of the millennium implied the definitive economic upturn for Latin America after two decades of losses, once during the debt crises of the ‘80s, and another from the economic turmoil brought on by monetary, fiscal, and other crises during the mid ‘90s.