Both problems “increase the cost of doing business, weaken the rule of law and cost us 3.5 percent of the annual regional GDP,” Ilan Goldfajn said.
Crime and violence cost Latin America and the Caribbean 3.5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), said on Monday in Ecuador, the president of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Ilan Goldfajn.
Both problems “increase the cost of doing business, weaken the rule of law and cost us 3.5 percent of the annual regional GDP,” said the official in Guayaquil, at a Security Summit that opened with the participation of delegations from a dozen Latin American countries and international organizations.
“They are an obstacle to development and growth,” Goldfajn added, pointing out that crime is currently “more organized, more sophisticated, more interconnected and does not respect borders.”
He argued that the region’s goal should be to “cut oxygen to organized crime.”
“We can do it” by limiting the influence of crime among the most vulnerable populations, strengthening state institutions and cutting off the financial flow, he said.
Faced with the “globalization” of the crime, it is “important that we work together,” said Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa, who, faced with a narco’s onslaught, declared his nation in internal armed conflict in January and mobilized the military to the streets to neutralize about twenty gangs with links with Mexican cartels.
“Defeating terrorism and its criminal networks is an urgent mission that requires international cooperation and the help of all multilateral agencies,” the president emphasized.
Ecuador’s Interior Minister Monica Palencia said organized crime “is a criminal enterprise with international financial flows, with arms exchange and trafficking” across borders. “It uses the same practices to infiltrate our institutions, corrupting them and weakening them,” he noted.
Ecuador closed 2023 with 47 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, a record number.
This article has been translated after first appearing in Diario El Mundo