La Jornada: AL, solid despite the crisis due to the conflict in the Middle East

The crisis unleashed by the attacks by the United States and Israel against Iran has become a determining factor in global economic prospects, causing an energy problem that is intensifying inflationary pressures, warned the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The effects on the world economy are already noticeable with a slight reduction in the global growth prospects for this year, which went from 2.9 to 2.8 percent. This, in the most benign scenario, but if the attacks continue, the blow to global activity could lead to an advance of 2.1 percent, he adds.

In a press conference, Aída Caldera, head of the OECD Economics Department, stressed that Latin America is not one of the regions most affected by the conflict, in addition to the fact that it reaches this shock from a more solid macroeconomic position than in recent crises. This does not mean that it is not feeling its effects with more limited fiscal room to respond, given the debt levels in the region and the expense consumed by interest payments. One of the first signs is in the financial channels.

Regional challenge

Brazil and Mexico lead the rise in the price of their 10-year sovereign bond debt, whose yield has increased 70 and almost 50 percent, respectively, since the United States and Israel began the conflict and caused the defensive closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran. “The challenge is for the region to grow stronger and more sustained,” he highlighted.

Hours earlier, Mathias Cormann, Secretary General of the OECD, highlighted: “the global economy began 2026 with solid dynamism, but the outlook has weakened significantly since the start of the conflict in the Middle East, and its effects are likely to last for some time.”

The OECD starts from two scenarios. One of “temporary disruption”, under which it foresees that global growth will be 2.8 percent in 2026. In the second, it assumes that energy tensions in the Gulf will last until 2027, with a growth of 1.8 percent.