Latin America’s economies: Learning the lessons of stagnation

UK Only Article: 
standard article

Issue: 

The right to die

Fly Title: 

Latin America’s economies

Rubric: 

As memories of galloping growth fade, it is time for tough thinking about the future

Location: 

LIMA

Main image: 

20150627_AMP004_0.jpg

IN JUNE 2006 Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, then Brazil’s president, went to Itaboraí, a sleepy farming town nestled where the flatlands beside Guanabara Bay meet the coastal mountain range. He announced the building of Comperj—the Rio de Janeiro petrochemical complex, a pharaonic undertaking of two oil refineries and a clutch of petrochemical plants. With forecasts of 220,000 new jobs in a town of 150,000 people, Itaboraí geared up for a boom.
Today it is almost a ghost town. Its straggling main street adjoins an unopened shopping mall and is punctuated by a score of blocks of flats and office towers, one with a heliport on the roof, all finished in the past few months and all plastered with “for …<div class="og_rss_groups"></div>
Source: The Economy