The Cuban government projects a 1% growth in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for 2025, which is contrary to the criteria of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) that indicates a 0.1% decrease for next year.
The increase of one percentage point in the GDP was announced in the National Assembly by Minister of Economy and Planning Joaquín Alonso Vázquez, who argued that the performance is based on the revival of several sectors.
“This performance is based on the recovery of tourism and income from the main export products, as well as the revival of productive, agricultural and industrial activities, and social services to the population,” the minister said in a report by the Cubadebate website.
Likewise, the official said that the growth forecast for 2025 is also influenced by the stabilization of the National Electric Power System and improvements in the fuel balance.
However, all the factors that should refloat the economy next year, according to the projections cited by Alonso Vázquez, had setbacks during 2024, especially tourism and agriculture.
For 2023, a growth of between 2% and 3% was forecast, but GDP ended up falling 1.9%, while the government has already ruled out that the economy will grow this 2024, when the initial official estimate was a 2% increase.
In its report Preliminary Overview of the Economies of Latin America and the Caribbean 2024, presented on Wednesday in Santiago de Chile, the UN agency estimated that Latin America will grow 2.4% in 2025, while Cuba will register a 0.1% decline in its GDP.
On the other hand, the three regional economies that will have a recessionary behavior this year are Cuba, with -1%, along with Argentina (-3.2%) and Haiti (-4%).
Luego de dos años recesivos, Cuba proyecta un crecimiento de 1 % del PIB para 2025
ECLAC indicated that “the economies of the region will continue this year and next mired in a trap of low capacity to grow, with growth rates that will remain low and with a growth dynamic that depends on private consumption, and less on investment.”
During the last decade, the average annual growth of the region was 1%, “which in turn implies a stagnation of GDP per capita during that period,” added the agency.
Venezuela (6.2%), the Dominican Republic (5.2%), Paraguay (4.2%) and Costa Rica (4.1%) are at the front of the Latin American pack in terms of GDP growth, although far behind Guyana, whose oil boom supports a spectacular growth of 41.5%, followed by Belize (7%) and Antigua and Barbuda (6%), three nations of the English-speaking Caribbean.
At the middle of the table are Nicaragua (3.7%), Honduras (3.6%), Guatemala (3.5%), Brazil (3.2%), Peru (3.1%), Uruguay (3.1%), El Salvador (3%), Panama (2.6%) and the Caribbean islands (2.5%).
Then, in the most backward places within positive figures are Chile (2.3%), Bolivia (1.7%), Colombia (1.8%), Mexico (1.4%) and Ecuador (0.8%).
Latin America, the most unequal region in the world, grew by 6.9% in 2021, rebounding from the pandemic, but in 2022 it slowed down to 3.7% and in 2023 it closed with a growth of 2.3%.
Author
OnCuba Staff
