The Dominican Republic is expected to grow 5.2% by the end of this year, the highest growth rate among the 20 Latin American countries according to forecasts from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
This increase in growth is estimated to be 2.8 percentage points higher compared to January-December 2023, when the GDP growth rate was 2.4%. And for 2025, ECLAC predicts that Dominican gross domestic product growth will be 4.5%.
Other countries that are expected to lead the growth figures this year are: Argentina with 4%; Costa Rica with 3.8% and Honduras and Paraguay with 3.6%. And of the 13 Caribbean countries analyzed, Guyana continues to lead the list with a growth of 29.2% for 2024.
ECLAC’s Economic Survey 2024 projects that Latin America and the Caribbean will continue on a low-growth trajectory this year, at an average rate of 1.8%. This slow growth would be observed in all subregions, since South America would grow by 1.5%; Central America and Mexico by 2.2%; and the Caribbean (excluding Guyana) by 2.6%. For 2025, growth of 2.3% is expected throughout the region, a rebound that would be explained, in particular, by the performance of South America (which will reach 2.4%).
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ECLAC today released a new edition of its annual report, Economic Survey of Latin America and the Caribbean 2024: Low-growth trap, climate change and employment dynamics, in which it stresses that the region remains stuck in a low-growth trap accompanied by poor investment performance and low labor productivity, coupled with little domestic space to implement macroeconomic recovery policies and global uncertainty.
According to the report, over the past decade, Latin American countries have experienced low economic growth, with an average rate of 0.9% in the period 2015-2024. Therefore, the report points out that boosting growth is a key task for the region to be able to respond to the environmental, social and labor challenges it currently faces.
“Confronting the growth trap, increasing employment and creating more productive jobs requires strengthening productive development policies that are complemented by macroeconomic, labour, and climate change adaptation and mitigation policies,” stressed the Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs.
