El Salvador. Between 3.2% and 3.3% would be the economic growth of Latin America at the end of 2012, a figure lower than expected when the year began.
This was announced by Alicia Bárcena, executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, ECLAC, during the installation of the 34th session currently being held in El Salvador.
Alicia Bárcena indicated that this decrease in expectation is due to the lower domestic demand of some countries in the region and the influence of the economic situation in Europe that has generated a decrease in exports to the old continent.
He also pointed out that the change in the figure of the growth expectation occurred despite having ratified last June the 3.7% that the entity had indicated at the beginning of the year, because regional and global conditions have changed, with a slowdown that he described as "very important".
The central theme of this meeting, which will be addressed by the 44 member countries of ECLAC and the eight associated countries, is the social inequality of Latin America, for which they will present the document Structural Change for Equality, an integrated vision of development.
According to figures from the entity, in the last two decades the States of the region have decreased the number of people living in poverty, from 48.4% in 1990 to 30.4% in 2011. Extreme poverty decreased by almost 10 points from 22.6% to 12.8%. Employment increased in quantity and improved in quality.
