MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Uruguay outperformed other regional economies, expanding 2.9% in 2009

Latam’s largest economy Brazil stopped growing for the first time in 18 years

Uruguay outperformed all other Latinamerican countries last year, according to the latest available data on 2009 economic growth. The data shows the Uruguayan economy expanded 2.9% in 2009, compared to 1.2% for Peru and 0.9% in Argentina.

Bolivian president Evo Morales announced that his country’s economy reacted strongly to the world crisis and managed to grow 3.7% in 2009, but the percentage still has to be confirmed by multilateral organizations.

In Argentina, expansion during the last quarter of 2009 was decisive to turn a negative forecast into slightly positive for the twelve months.
Ecuador’s economy apparently was also on the positive side, 0.4% announced President Rafael Correa.

Brazil also surprised since contrary to what was expected a timely and well guided stimulus plan helped contain the overall contraction to minus 0.2%, which is the country’s first negative performance in 18 years of sustained growth.

Other countries which also managed to overcome the global slowdown of the last two years includes Colombia, which allegedly expanded 2.5% last year, but the official data won’t be available until next week.

At the other end of the list figure Chile with a negative growth of 1.5%, Venezuela whose GDP contracted 2.9%, following five positive years.

Paraguay also suffered a contraction of 3.8% in 2009, and the worst performer was Latin America’s second largest economy Mexico, closely linked to the US economy, that shrank 6.5%.