The year 2022 was a vintage one for political turmoil in Latin America. Colombia elected a leftwing former guerrilla as president, Chile considered (and rejected) a radical new constitution, Peru’s president has been put in pre-trial detention after a failed attempt to seize extraordinary powers and Brazil’s far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro narrowly lost a bid for re-election.It was also a record year for foreign direct investment. Investors committed $225bn to Latin America and the Caribbean in 2022, according to ECLAC, the UN’s economic agency for the region. That was 55 per cent more than the previous year and comfortably surpassed the previous peak a decade earlier. Part of the increase was a post-pandemic rebound but the number of future projects announced also rose, though more modestly.
There were other surprises. Despite alarm in Washington over growing Chinese interest in Latin America, Beijing and Hong Kong accounted for just 3 per cent of the money flowing into the region last year. That was far behind the US’s 38 per cent or the EU’s 29 per cent (though some Chinese investment could have been channelled via third countries).
Although Latin America has been much touted as a location for renewable energy investment, more foreign money was spent last year on fossil fuel projects in the region than on solar or wind, the first time this has happened for a decade.