Canning Papers

In December 2017, Canning House published a paper outlining the potential for ‘smart cities’ in Latin America. Two years later, this paper assesses how the smart cities story has evolved.

Brazilian construction company Odebrecht’s admission in 2016 that it had bribed
public officials across Latin America over a decade to secure contracts led to the
jailing of more than 130 officials and business people in Brazil by November 2018.
Even incumbent and former presidents have fallen as a result of the scandal.
The public has become increasingly disenchanted with democratic politics, as
governments are perceived to be self-serving and corrupt.

There is widespread agreement that the economies of Latin America and the Caribbean are not growing fast enough. There are many reasons for this, among them the end of the commodities boom, large fiscal deficits, corruption, the electoral cycle, and high levels of political uncertainty. While the exact role each of these factors has played is open to debate, it is also true that low growth can be traced back to a simple and at first sight rather more technical issue: low levels of investment, particularly in infrastructure.

Politics is changing in Latin America. The so-called ‘pink tide’ of left-wing governments, associated with a decade of booming commodity prices, has peaked and ebbed. In the aftermath voters are angry over the slowdown in economic growth, corruption, and crime. In some countries the political pendulum has swung to the Right, or even to the extreme Right. Populist and nationalist politicians of both the Right and Left have made gains. The picture is not uniform. In this paper we will try to get a feel for the direction of travel and how it is affecting business

El Salvador’s presidential election on 3 February represents an opportunity for Nayib Bukele, of Gran Alianza por la Unidad Nacional (Gana), to end the dominance of the country’s traditional parties. Bukele has galvanised support through dissociating himself from the political establishment.

It has been a bumper year for elections across Latin America, and the resounding message from the constituency has been a rejection of the traditional and mainstream. An electorate disillusioned with a corrupt ruling class and fed up of waiting for promised solutions to perennial problems that never materialise has used its vote to bring to power candidates espousing radical and populist policies; from the Left in Mexico and the Right in Brazil.