Latin America's Lack of Competitiveness

After 59 months of uninterrupted expansion, investors in Latin America keep ..... themselves and wondering out loud, "When will it end?"

The recent financial market correction felt around the world on the heels of the US sub-prime mortgage crisis brought many a dooms-dayer to the ..... with predictions of currency slippage and spiking interest rates, says John Price of InfoAmericas.

But Latin America is far less ..... than it used to be to contagion, politically-inspired capital flight, or drastic currency corrections; the region will not fall from one fatal blow, but it does risk death by a thousand cuts if it fails to reform itself into a more competitive economy.

The reforms of the 1990s have proven their worth in this time of plenty: by shrinking government, professionalizing monetary policy, floating currencies and freeing capital markets, the money entering the region is staying ......

Even in today's populist social environment, political leaders have made fiscal discipline and conservative monetary policy ..... of their economic strategies.

Bolivia's president, Evo Morales, hardly a ..... of commerce, remarked soon after taking office that "inflation and corruption hurt the poor the most".

If Latin America is doing so well, why can't it compete? - even the region's economic darling, Chile, is dropping like a ..... in global competitiveness rankings.

Return on investment in a country is driven by productivity, and in Latin America, productivity performance is the .....: from 2003 to 2005, Latin American economies, when measured in dollars, expanded by an astonishing 53% but their productivity over the same three years grew by less than 4%.

Today's winning industries in Latin America, such as mining (which attracted an impressive 23% of global exploration investment in 2006), metals, energy and agrifood, together provide little ..... to government to keep trade open.

The nail in the ..... for free trade thinking in Latin America could come from a rejection by Washington politicians of proposed trade agreements with Peru, Colombia and Panama.