Canning Papers

This report was written when Mexico — the second largest country in Latin America by size of population and economy, a neighbour and partner of the US, one of the world’s top 15 economies, and a member of important interna- tional ‘clubs’ such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Devel- opment (OECD), the G20 group of developed economies, and the Pacific Alliance — is on the cusp of major changes.

Companies are like living organisms. They are born, they grow, they shrink, they die, sometimes they go to sleep for a while, sometimes they revive: some split in two and some have children. Not for nothing have their twists and turns been likened to a process of ‘creative destruction’.

This report applies a form of scenario planning to Colombia over the next decade. It notes the strategic and economic importance of the country within Latin America, as the number three both in population size (48.3m in 2013) and by the value of its GDP (US$378.1bn, also in 2013)1.

‘Latin America is the most violent region of the world.’ This has been a fre- quent headline, both in the region and beyond, since April, when the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (Unodc) released its most recent (2013) Global Study on Homicide. It was not actually news but it did dovetail with the widespread use of homicide rates as the yardstick of insecurity in Latin America — even though there is no automatic correlation between those rates and the public perception of insecurity. It is not the only case of wide- spread reliance on assumptions that hinder a useful understanding of the issue. This paper does not pretend to offer the ‘correct’ formula, but to iden- tify and help avoid the pitfalls.

Central America has experienced significant transformations in the last 25 years, moving from war to peace, from dictatorship to democracy and from a state-led, agricultural-based model to a market-oriented, service-based one. Governments in the region are increasingly focused on attracting for- eign direct investment (FDI) and promoting new non-traditional agriculture and manufacturing exports.

Since late April, widespread commentary in mainstream media has alluded to the possibility that, by some measures, China may overtake the United States (US) to become the world’s largest national economy before the end of 2014. Whether or not this happens, it remains true that developments in China have considerably greater potential to affect economies in Latin America than they used to. The title of this paper, ‘China and Latin America, 2014-2016: Three Dimensions’ reflects several aspects of the relationship between the country and the region that we consider important.