The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) highlighted the top 10 products exported by the region in 2021 and made a comparison with 2010.
These are the 10 products:
- Petroleum oils and oils obtained from bituminous minerals, crude.
- Motor vehicles for the transportation of people.
- Refined copper.
- Copper ores and their concentrates.
- Iron ore and its concentrates, unagglomerated.
- Non-monetary gold, unwrought or semi-manufactured, or in powder form.
- Other automatic data processing machines.
- Soybeans.
- Other motor vehicles for the transport of goods.
- Oilseed cakes and other solid residues of soybean oil.
Products exported
Latin America and the Caribbean: share of annual exports of top 10 products according to SITC Rev.4, 2010 and 2021[A].
Latin America and the Caribbean: share of the 10 leading products in total annual exports (SITC, Rev.4), 2010 and 2021[A] (Percentages/Percentages)
Context
According to a U.S. congressional analysis, living standards have stagnated or declined in many Latin American and Caribbean countries over the past decade.
Annual economic growth in the region averaged 0.6% per year between 2014 and 2019, following a decline in international prices for the region’s commodity exports, and contracted 7.0% in 2020, during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Although the region’s economies grew by an average of 7.0% in 2021 and 3.9% in 2022, average per capita incomes have not yet fully recovered and Latin America’s poverty rate (32.1%) remains above pre-pandemic levels.
Many governments in the region ran large fiscal deficits as they enacted economic support measures to mitigate the 2020 recession and accelerate economic recovery.
This increased debt burden, combined with rising financing costs, has left many governments with limited resources to respond to slowing economic growth (projected to average 1.8% in 2023) or to meet popular demands for more generous social welfare systems, higher quality public services, and improved public safety.
