Publication: Unleashing Central America's Growth Potential
Loading...
Files in English
808 downloads
105 downloads
50 downloads
Published
2021-01
ISSN
Date
2021-04-26
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Central America’s priority is to recover from its deepest economic contraction and restore strong, sustainable economic growth. With increases in working age population projected to decline sharply, strong growth in the long run can only be achieved with higher productivity. More effective participation in global value chains (GVCs), as well as a robust shift towards sophisticated exports of goods and services will be needed, but neither can be ensured without firms investing in productivity-enhancing innovations. With a high likelihood of limited structural change, greater aggregate productivity must come from within each sector of manufacturing, services and agriculture. The synthesis report analyzes the main findings of the Unleashing Central America’s Growth Potential Study, focusing on productivity and export performance of the region over the past three decades and accounting for the impact of the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic on the region. It aims to identify broad strategic directions for the region that would help to increase sophistication of exports, reduce productivity gaps within the region and vis-à-vis other regions, and achieve higher productivity growth. Where relevant, the report suggests areas for further work that could help develop more granular policy recommendations. The rest of this synthesis report is organized as follows: the first section provides an overview of the growth performance of the region over the last thirty years, and provides the current and future challenges facing the region; the second section reviews the performance of productivity growth during 1991-2017; and the third section reviews the growth of exports of goods and services during 1991-2017.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Ulku, Hulya; Zaourak, Gabriel. 2021. Unleashing Central America's Growth Potential. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35503 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Unleashing Central America’s Growth Potential(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-07-30)Central America comprises a diverse set of countries, including two high-middle-income countries (Costa Rica and Panama), two of the poorest countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (Honduras and Nicaragua), and two middle-income economies (Guatemala and El Salvador). Low productivity and weak institutions are behind the modest economic growth in Central America in recent years. Both the common features and striking differences among Central American countries provide a fertile ground for exploiting complementarities. Common features include: (i) strong economic links to the United States; (ii) high labor mobility across countries and a high level of informality; (iii) the relatively poor quality of infrastructure, including border crossings; (iv) a concentration of poverty in rural areas, with a low provision of public services, that affect particularly vulnerable groups such as indigenous and Afro-descendent populations; and (v) a high exposure to natural disasters and economic and financial volatility. The economies of each of the six countries in the sub-region were heavily affected by Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). In order to restore economic activity in the short run and increase potential output over the long run, Central America should launch coordinated policy action in five areas: (i) global value chain (GVCs); (ii) trade integration; (iii) formalization; (iv) management of volatility; and (v) remittances (for the northern Central American countries). The findings and recommendations emerging from the analyses are presented in the report.Publication Unleashing Central America’s Growth Potential(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-07-30)Despite advances in the growth reform agenda in the last decade, Honduras remains the second-poorest country in Central America, with one of the lowest growth rates in income per capita. The objective of this study is to investigate the drivers and constraints of growth and productivity in Honduras and explore areas with high growth potential. The value added of this study is to provide an in-depth analysis of the drivers and constraints of Honduras’s growth using a wide range of analytical tools. According to the growth diagnostics methodology, this report finds that the areas preventing faster growth are: (i) corruption; (ii) security; (iii) property rights; (iv) innovative activities; and (v) access of small firms to finance. Tackling the identified growth constraints can help Honduras in the transition from an exporter of low-complexity products to an economy with higher share complex products. This report has identified several key areas in which Honduras lags its comparator and aspirational countries, but which can help boost productivity and growth over the medium to long term. They include: improving transparency, accountability, and rule of law; reducing crime and violence; creating an enabling environment for innovation; improving the rule of law to better protect property rights and reduce expropriation risk; increasing the access of finance to small firms; and coordinating with the private sector to identify missing public goods and design mechanism to provide them.Publication Unleashing Central America’s Growth Potential(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-08-06)Panama’s growth model is at crossroads and the country must be prepared for the new growth model. The objective of this study is to investigate the drivers and constraints of growth and productivity in Panama and explore areas with high growth potential. The value added of the study is to provide an in-depth analysis of the drivers and constraints of Panama’s growth using a wide range of analytical tools. The analysis employs several quantitative methods to provide an objective assessment of the drivers and constraints of growth in Panama, including the long-term growth model (LTGM), computable general equilibrium model (CGE), growth diagnostics and product space analyses. The novelty of this study is to employ the same framework, analytical tools, and data to conduct a parallel analysis for each Central American country to allow for a meaningful cross-country comparison. Therefore, given the wide breadth of the study, in terms of the methodologies used, themes analyzed, and countries covered, it does not envisage to deep dive into each driver and constraint of growth and provide granular policy recommendations. The core objective of this study is to inform the policy makers and other interested parties about the country’s strengths and weaknesses for its growth, and to establish the analytical basis for a subsequent investigation of specific areas.Publication Unleashing Central America’s Growth Potential(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-07-30)As the smallest economy in Central America, Nicaragua has undergone a structural transformation that has enabled the country to grow at a high pace since the mid-1990s. The objective of this study is to investigate the drivers and constraints of growth and productivity in Nicaragua and explore areas with high potential. The value added of this study is to provide an in-depth analysis of the drivers and constraints of Nicaragua’s growth using a wide range of analytical tools. Using these tools, the report finds that boosting growth and reducing poverty requires raising productivity growth and facilitating the entry of women to the labor market. According to the growth diagnostics methodology, this report finds that the areas preventing faster growth are: (i) corruption, (ii) financial development, (iii) governance, (iv) lack of innovation, and (v) property rights. Addressing the identified growth constraints can help the country in the path towards diversification, which will increase the resilience to external shocks, create job opportunities, generate sustainable growth, and reduce dependence on remittances. This report has identified several key areas where policy reforms can help boost productivity and growth over the medium to long term. They include: implementing measures to boost female labor force participation; increasing the access of small firms to finance and addressing collateral laws, credit information coverage, and competition; coordinate with the private sector to identify missing public goods and to design mechanisms to provide them; creation of an enabling environment for innovation; strengthening public institutions through reducing bureaucracy, promoting transparency and rule of law, and strengthening the capacity of the public sector; improving the property titling regime and the land administration system; and strengthening the institutional framework, including tackling corruption.Publication Unleashing Central America’s Growth Potential(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-10-01)The objective of this study is to investigate the drivers and constraints of growth and productivity in Guatemala and explore areas with high growth potential. Drawing on the historical growth experience of Guatemala and employing a range of analytical tools, this country analysis aims to provide an in-depth study of the drivers and constraints of the country’s economic growth. The report first takes stock of the historical growth and macro performance of the country, before moving to a growth accounting exercise to understand the past drivers of the country’s growth. In the same vein, the subsequent section analyzes aggregate trends in productivity, the engine of long-term growth, and its relation to the process of structural transformation. The study then uses a cross-country benchmarking and panel data regression analysis based on the growth diagnostic developed by Hausmann et al. (2005) to identify the binding constraints to growth. Finally, the analysis presents the links between growth, diversification, and exports. This analysis relies on a wide range of analytical tools, which are applied to each of the six countries in the study to enable cross-country comparisons. Several quantitative methods are employed to provide an objective assessment of the drivers and constraints of growth in Guatemala, including the long-term growth model (LTGM), the computable general equilibrium model (CGE), growth diagnostics, and product space analyses. This same framework, analytical tools, and data are used for each Central American country to conduct a parallel analysis that enables meaningful cross-country comparisons. Therefore, given the wide breadth of the study, in terms of the methodologies used, subjects analyzed, and countries covered, it does not aim to analyze in depth each driver and constraint of growth and provide granular policy recommendations. The core objective of this study is to inform the policy makers and other interested parties about the country’s strengths and weaknesses related to its growth, and to establish the analytical basis for subsequent investigations of specific areas.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Western Balkans 6 Country Climate and Development Report(Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 2024-07-16)This Regional Western Balkans Countries Climate and Development Report (CCDR) stands out in several ways. In a region that often lacks cohesive regional alliances, this report emphasizes how the challenges faced across countries are often common and interconnected, and, importantly, that climate action requires coordination on multiple fronts. Simultaneously, it illustrates the differences across countries, places, and people that require targeted strategies and interventions. This report demonstrates how shocks and stressors re intensifying and how investments in adaptation could bring significant benefits in the form of avoided losses, accelerated economic potential, and amplified social and economic spillovers. Given the region’s high emission and energy intensity and the limitations of its current fossil fuel-based development model, the report articulates a path to greener and more resilient growth, a path that is more consistent with the aspiration of accession to the EU. The report finds that the net zero transition can be undertaken without compromising the economic potential of the Western Balkans and that it could lead to higher growth than under the Reference Scenario (RS) with appropriate structural reforms.Publication World Development Report 2023: Migrants, Refugees, and Societies(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2023-04-25)Migration is a development challenge. About 184 million people—2.3 percent of the world’s population—live outside of their country of nationality. Almost half of them are in low- and middle-income countries. But what lies ahead? As the world struggles to cope with global economic imbalances, diverging demographic trends, and climate change, migration will become a necessity in the decades to come for countries at all levels of income. If managed well, migration can be a force for prosperity and can help achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. World Development Report 2023 proposes an innovative approach to maximize the development impacts of cross-border movements on both destination and origin countries and on migrants and refugees themselves. The framework it offers, drawn from labor economics and international law, rests on a “Match and Motive Matrix” that focuses on two factors: how closely migrants’ skills and attributes match the needs of destination countries and what motives underlie their movements. This approach enables policy makers to distinguish between different types of movements and to design migration policies for each. International cooperation will be critical to the effective management of migration.Publication World Development Report 2021(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-03-24)Today’s unprecedented growth of data and their ubiquity in our lives are signs that the data revolution is transforming the world. And yet much of the value of data remains untapped. Data collected for one purpose have the potential to generate economic and social value in applications far beyond those originally anticipated. But many barriers stand in the way, ranging from misaligned incentives and incompatible data systems to a fundamental lack of trust. World Development Report 2021: Data for Better Lives explores the tremendous potential of the changing data landscape to improve the lives of poor people, while also acknowledging its potential to open back doors that can harm individuals, businesses, and societies. To address this tension between the helpful and harmful potential of data, this Report calls for a new social contract that enables the use and reuse of data to create economic and social value, ensures equitable access to that value, and fosters trust that data will not be misused in harmful ways. This Report begins by assessing how better use and reuse of data can enhance the design of public policies, programs, and service delivery, as well as improve market efficiency and job creation through private sector growth. Because better data governance is key to realizing this value, the Report then looks at how infrastructure policy, data regulation, economic policies, and institutional capabilities enable the sharing of data for their economic and social benefits, while safeguarding against harmful outcomes. The Report concludes by pulling together the pieces and offering an aspirational vision of an integrated national data system that would deliver on the promise of producing high-quality data and making them accessible in a way that promotes their safe use and reuse. By examining these opportunities and challenges, the Report shows how data can benefit the lives of all people, but particularly poor people in low- and middle-income countries.Publication World Development Report 2022(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-02-15)World Development Report 2022: Finance for an Equitable Recovery examines the central role of finance in the economic recovery from COVID-19. Based on an in-depth look at the consequences of the crisis most likely to affect low- and middle-income economies, it advocates a set of policies and measures to mitigate the interconnected economic risks stemming from the pandemic—risks that may become more acute as stimulus measures are withdrawn at both the domestic and global levels. Those policies include the efficient and transparent management of nonperforming loans to mitigate threats to financial stability, insolvency reforms to allow for the orderly reduction of unsustainable debts, innovations in risk management and lending models to ensure continued access to credit for households and businesses, and improvements in sovereign debt management to preserve the ability of governments to support an equitable recovery.Publication World Development Report 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-08-01)Middle-income countries are in a race against time. Many of them have done well since the 1990s to escape low-income levels and eradicate extreme poverty, leading to the perception that the last three decades have been great for development. But the ambition of the more than 100 economies with incomes per capita between US$1,100 and US$14,000 is to reach high-income status within the next generation. When assessed against this goal, their record is discouraging. Since the 1970s, income per capita in the median middle-income country has stagnated at less than a tenth of the US level. With aging populations, growing protectionism, and escalating pressures to speed up the energy transition, today’s middle-income economies face ever more daunting odds. To become advanced economies despite the growing headwinds, they will have to make miracles. Drawing on the development experience and advances in economic analysis since the 1950s, World Development Report 2024 identifies pathways for developing economies to avoid the “middle-income trap.” It points to the need for not one but two transitions for those at the middle-income level: the first from investment to infusion and the second from infusion to innovation. Governments in lower-middle-income countries must drop the habit of repeating the same investment-driven strategies and work instead to infuse modern technologies and successful business processes from around the world into their economies. This requires reshaping large swaths of those economies into globally competitive suppliers of goods and services. Upper-middle-income countries that have mastered infusion can accelerate the shift to innovation—not just borrowing ideas from the global frontiers of technology but also beginning to push the frontiers outward. This requires restructuring enterprise, work, and energy use once again, with an even greater emphasis on economic freedom, social mobility, and political contestability. Neither transition is automatic. The handful of economies that made speedy transitions from middle- to high-income status have encouraged enterprise by disciplining powerful incumbents, developed talent by rewarding merit, and capitalized on crises to alter policies and institutions that no longer suit the purposes they were once designed to serve. Today’s middle-income countries will have to do the same.