Official Takes on the G-20 and Latin America

Javier Santiso, the head of the emerging markets department at the OECD and the author of a very useful book about the new economic reality in Latin America, says the G-20 summit left clear three facts that will reverberate in Latin America. First, with only three countries (Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina), the region remains underdeveloped and far from reaching its potential. Second, China's significance is growing, growing, growing. Here's more: 

A decade ago, a sneeze in China passed unnoticed in Latin America. In 2009, that is no longer the case...For some countries in the region like Chile, for example, Asia is now the principal destination for their exports (35 percent of Chilean exports land in that region of the world, more than in North American or Europe). For Peru, the figure is 19 percent, and others like Brazil and Argentina are looking ever more toward the Pacific. Since 1995, commerce between Latin America and the Caribbean with China has increased 13 fold, going from $8.4 billion in 1995 to more than $100 billion in 2007. In 2008, China became the second commercial partner in the region, just after the United States. As if that weren't enough, the prices of prime resources, which represent more than 60 percent of the total of Latin American exports, depend in part on Asian demand, China devouring oil, copper, soy, and other key products from the region. 

The last point is the IMF is once again a major protagonist in international finance, as the credit line secured by Mexico last week demonstrates. 

Agustín Carstens also wrote a post-op of the summit, which basically amounted to, Everything that happened, Mexico supported from the get-go. Here was his conclusion: 

The present crisis imposes unexpected challenges and requires opportune, forceful, and coordinated responses. For Mexico, the London summit offers the opportunity agree to an ambitious and integral agenda that shows clear compromises of the governments to reestablish the trust and generate a radical change in expectations. Far from turning on itself, Mexico strengthens its role as a leader in the reestablishment and reconstruction of a world financial order, with concrete proposals and a clear vision of the goals we are pursuing. 

I'd have liked him to expand on the radical change in expectations a bit more, and to hear a little more about the concrete proposals aside from those already agreed upon at the summit. An article like this would be more useful if it talked a bit about where Calderón and co. thought G-20 came up short, rather than just hailing each act as though it were the product of divine reason. Oh well, what can you expect from an active official?