Latin America growth 1.1% in 2014, slowest in 5 years

Latin America's economies will grow just 1.1 percent in 2014, their lowest level in five years, hit by falling investment, a UN commission on the region said Tuesday.
Growth is expected to bounce back slightly in 2015, to 2.2 percent, said the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
ECLAC said the sluggish growth came amid a slow and uneven global recovery from the economic crisis, falling commodities prices, increasing financial uncertainty and "scarce dynamism" in Latin America's external demand.
The figures are the latest confirmation of the end of the region's so-called "golden decade" of commodities-fuelled growth.
Across the region, the picture was largely uneven.
Central America, Haiti and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean grew 3.7 percent, but South America grew just 0.7 percent and the English-speaking Caribbean 1.9 percent, ECLAC said.
For 2015, the commission forecast growth of 4.1 percent in Central America, Haiti and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, 1.8 percent in South America and 2.2 percent in the English-speaking Caribbean.
The fastest-growing countries next year will be Panama with 7.0-percent growth, Bolivia with 5.5-percent growth, and the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua with 5.0-percent growth, it predicted.