Geisha Kow­lessar

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Latin Amer­i­ca’s in­trare­gion­al trade is be­ing more af­fect­ed by the COVID-19 cri­sis than its ex­ports to the rest of the world.

This ac­cord­ing to a re­port from the IDB which not­ed the num­ber of ships de­part­ing from Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (LAC) ports had de­clined con­sid­er­ably.

The IDB said the oil cri­sis will have sub­stan­tial im­pacts on the economies of LAC coun­tries that spe­cialise in hy­dro­car­bon ex­ports.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion said com­pared to oth­er re­gions, in­trare­gion­al trade in Latin Amer­i­ca (Latam) is be­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly more af­fect­ed by the COVID-19 cri­sis than Latam’s ex­ports to the rest of the world.

Es­ti­mates for the first quar­ter of 2020 show a 7.9 per cent drop in in­tra-Latam flows, more than twice the rate at which its ex­tra-re­gion­al sales have con­tract­ed at -2.1 per cent.

The IDB not­ed that with­in the Eu­ro­pean Union and Naf­ta, in­tra and ex­tra re­gion­al trade has shrunk at sim­i­lar rates, al­though in­tra-EU trade seems to be slight­ly more re­silient.

The IDB added that mea­sures to con­tain the pan­dem­ic have made in-per­son cus­toms pro­ce­dures ex­treme­ly com­plex.

This has put the spot­light on how far dif­fer­ent coun­tries in the re­gion have ad­vanced with im­ple­ment­ing elec­tron­ic (pa­per­less) doc­u­men­ta­tion sys­tems for cross-bor­der trade, the or­gan­i­sa­tion added.

The IDB said in 12 of the 16 ports in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, the num­ber of car­go ship de­par­tures in April 2020 was sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er than in April 2019—in some cas­es, de­par­tures were down by more than 50 per cent.

The most sig­nif­i­cant drops were ob­served in the ports of Buenos Aires (Ar­genti­na), San­to Tomás (Guatemala), Guayaquil (Ecuador), and Moin (Cos­ta Ri­ca), the IDB said.

It added that records for the first week of May showed signs of im­prove­ment in six ports, where the rate of down­turn slowed and even re­versed in two cas­es (San­to Tomás, Guatemala, and Cristóbal, Pana­ma).

The ports of Cauce­do (Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic) and San An­to­nio (Chile), did not ex­pe­ri­ence neg­a­tive year-on-year vari­a­tions in their av­er­ages for April and May, the IDB added.