Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have become a major driving force as they create 60 million jobs in Latin America and the Caribbean, Ambassador Clarems Endara, Permanent Secretary of SELA, said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SMEs account for 90% of Latin American enterprises; they create more than 50% of jobs and represent one fourth of the GDP. SMEs have a high profile in all productive sectors and a big clout on the social network. Data of CAF show that near 60% of Latin Americans work in enterprises of five or less employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSMEs are among the most adversely affected areas in the whole region. Precisely in this sector we have witnessed the final shutdown of around 20% of them. Reference is made to family businesses. Interestingly, precisely this sector is restarting operations, helping domestic economies resume activities,\u201d Ambassador Endara said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Latin America has approximately 12.9 million SMEs, apportioned among 17 countries, including 91.2% of micro-enterprises, 6.3% of small enterprises and 1.6% of medium-sized enterprises. According to ECLAC, 2.7 million business shut down in 2020, amounting to 19% on aggregate in the region. As regards micro-enterprises, such a percentage could be as low as 21%. In terms of employment, this means the loss of about 8.5 million jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cForecast could lead us to 5.3% of GDP growth in the region in 2020, but we need to bear in mind that we will get back to normal only as long as there is massive immunization; then, a balance will be struck at 3.3% next year,\u201d the Permanent Secretary of SELA specified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ambassador Endara added that economic recovery is experiencing a rebound effect and that normal conditions will return insofar as companies reach price stabilization and self-regulation. \u201cIndeed, this has disrupted the region, in addition to logistic and freight transportation concerns,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To the mind of Ambassador Endara, we come from a hard-hit decade before the pandemic, with slowdown precisely in all that momentum in the region. \u201cRegional growth slumped from 6% to 0.2%, that is, a lot, and the pandemic aggravated such economic crisis, resulting in multiple crises,\u201d the official said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe are talking about economic crisis and political crisis, in addition to health crisis, and, now, social crisis. We have witnessed a badly hit economy in 2020. So, in 2021 we are still feeling the impact; there are some traces of economic growth, estimated by the IMF at 5.3% for the region. Still, we can note gaps and bridging them could take long,\u201d the representative of SELA commented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Latin American and Caribbean Council (SELA) is working on a new agenda beyond 2022, in tandem with Member States. Such initiative has been useful to enliven SELA in its purpose of coordination of a regional and policy rostrum to bolster the economic and social agenda, to be implemented jointly by Member States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Member States have identified multiple issues related to production diversification, competitiveness, entrepreneurship and definition of value chains. For this reason, steps have been taken to find a niche in foreign markets and for business promotion. SELA has been working on some of these topics, and it is set to develop a great hub on production articulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next meeting of the Latin American Council is scheduled for November in order to approve a regional agenda in line with the needs of Member States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have become a major driving force as they create 60 million jobs in Latin America and the Caribbean, Ambassador Clarems Endara, Permanent Secretary of SELA, said. SMEs account for 90% of Latin American enterprises; they create more than 50% of jobs and represent one fourth of the GDP. SMEs have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":121604,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rmtsolutions.net\/sela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rmtsolutions.net\/sela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rmtsolutions.net\/sela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rmtsolutions.net\/sela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rmtsolutions.net\/sela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rmtsolutions.net\/sela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rmtsolutions.net\/sela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rmtsolutions.net\/sela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rmtsolutions.net\/sela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rmtsolutions.net\/sela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}