1. Fiscal Panorama of Latin America and the Caribbean, 2019 examines the role of tax policy as a tool for driving progress towards achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. One way to strengthen collection is to address the challenges of taxing the rapidly growing digital economy. Tax policy can also be used to shift production and consumption patterns to encourage decarbonization of the economy and support improvements in public health. Lastly, the document analyses the constraints on domestic resource mobilization caused by fiscal incentives and how, effectively geared towards investment, these incentives could instead foster sustainable and inclusive development.
2. This 12th edition of The Latin American Economic Outlook (LEO), Development in Transition, presents a fresh analytical approach in the region. Socio-economic progress in LAC since the beginning of the century has strengthened the macroeconomic situations of individual countries, improved living standards, and mitigated poverty and inequality. Yet large structural vulnerabilities remain and new ones have emerged, many of which are linked to the transition to higher income and development levels. This new approach offers a comprehensive analytical assessment of the increasingly complex multi-dimensional challenges facing the region: four development traps relating to productivity, social vulnerability, institutions and the environment. It outlines local opportunities for responding to those traps and seeks ways of improving global public goods to reinforce national agendas, all in the context of the United Nations 2030 Agenda. LEO 2019 calls for improving domestic capacities and adopting a new vision of international co-operation as a facilitator to support those efforts.