Bogotá

LATIN America hit the end of its fifth consecutive year of anaemic economic growth. From 2014 to 2018, annual GDP growth has averaged just 0.5 per cent, slower than during the first five years of the Latin American debt crisis (1981-85) and the five that followed the 1997 Asian financial crisis (1998-2002). It is safe to say that Latin America has suffered a "lost half-decade".

While a few small economies have achieved annual growth rates exceeding 4 per cent - notably, Panama and the Dominican Republic, and, to a lesser extent, Bolivia and Paraguay - Latin America's larger economies have struggled. Venezuela, in particular, has experienced not only the sharpest collapse of any Latin American economy in history, but also the most severe hyperinflation.