The OECD significantly improves its forecasts for 2021 in the three largest economies in Latin America

A delivery man, in February, in one of the great arteries of Buenos Aires.Juan Ignacio RONCORONI / EFE

The three largest economies in Latin America are not immune to the general improvement in economic forecasts projected this Tuesday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Brazil, Mexico and Argentina, which together account for almost 70% of regional GDP and close to 60% of the population, will rebound in 2021 more than expected in December of last year: the former will grow by 3.7% (1.1 percentage points more), the second by 4.5% (0.9 points more) and the third by 4.6% (also 0.9 points more).

From now on, as the organism itself emphasizes, the recovery remains reliant on the deployment of vaccines.

• OECD urges acceleration of vaccination to consolidate economic recovery

• Latin America: back to the starting point

Although the organization does not offer data for the rest of the Latin American countries that are not in the G20, it is to be expected that the spurt of the three regional giants will exert a tractor power over the rest and result in a greater expansion of the rest of the bloc.

But the good news remains there: in 2022 the forecasts only improve slightly for Brazil, which will grow by 2.7% (0.5 points more than projected so far), while for Mexico and Argentina they worsen by four tenths and in 2.5 points, up to 3% and 2.1% respectively.

Both Mexico and Argentina are also among the six G20 countries that will most feel the blow of the virus in their economy, measured as the difference between the GDP forecast today for the end of 2022 and the one projected for then in 2019, when There was no sign of the coronavirus: the South American nation will be the fifth to suffer the most, only behind India, Indonesia, South Africa and Spain, and ahead of Mexico.

"The emerging economies of Latin America and Africa are facing a new resurgence of the virus, and the slow pace of the vaccination process and the limited scope for more room for [fiscal and monetary] policy will probably moderate the recovery," predicts the agency based in Paris.

The global economy is today, more than ever, in the hands of science;

and there the countries with fewer resources to reach supply agreements with pharmaceutical companies have the upper hand to lose.

According to the latest inoculation data included in the report, Brazil is in the mid-range of G20 countries when it comes to vaccine deployment.

Argentina and Mexico, in the lowest part of the table.

Biden's stimulus plan, tailwind for Mexico

The new US government, chaired by Democrat Joe Biden, will irrigate the economy with 1.9 trillion dollars (1.6 trillion euros, almost twice the Mexican GDP and one and a half times the Spanish GDP) to try to remove it from the lethargy induced by virus containment measures.

It is such an important figure that it will have effects for the rest of the world.

And Mexico, along with Canada, the country most closely linked to the United States economically, will obtain a powerful tailwind to try to get out of the crisis: both countries will achieve a boost of between half and one percentage point between the middle of this year and principles of the one that comes, according to the calculations elaborated by the technicians of the OECD.

Much more modest will be the impulse of the Biden plan on the eurozone and China, where GDP growth will accelerate between a quarter of a point and a half point, while the US itself will see its economy accelerate by between three and four points.

If in the Trump era, a president who came to the White House with a bellicose anti-Mexican speech, his neighbor to the south has borne the brunt, now his ties with one of the fastest recovering economies will earn him significant collateral benefit.

The tables have turned.

Subscribe here to the EL PAÍS América newsletter and receive all the informative keys of the current situation in the region.