SANTIAGO, Chile, Nov 13, CMC – The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) says productivity in Latin America and the Caribbean(LAC) remains on a stagnated trend since the 2010s, and differences from the rest of the world continue to increase.
In its latest report titled “Panorama of Productive Development Policies in Latin America and the Caribbean 2026” ECLAC noted that in 2025, labour productivity per hour worked in Latin America and the Caribbean increased by 0.7 per cent, compared to a 0.8 per cent increase in 2024. It said on average, each hour worked generated USD $11.30 at current prices.
But ECLAC said that Latin America and the Caribbean is still caught in a trap of low capacity for growth and transformation, explained to a large extent by the stagnation of productivity.
It said that after the second lost decade (2014-2023), the region faces the challenge of recovering is capacity for growth in an international context marked by rivalry and technological and industrial competition among major powers.
ECLAC’s Executive Secretary, speaking at the launch of the report, said leveraging opportunities in the world economy in the new geopolitical era demands, now more than ever, turning the region’s assets into productive capacities, and doing so in a way that translates into both higher productivity and better employment opportunities.
He said this requires scaling and improving productive development policies in the region.
“With this publication, ECLAC reaffirms its commitment to accompanying and guiding the countries of this region and hopes to offer a useful tool for to national and subnational governments, the private sector, academia, and cooperation agencies to strengthen productive development policies at a time when strategic clarity, transformative ambition, and collective action are urgently needed,” he said.
The report analyzes the region’s performance regarding productive transformation, productivity, and employment, as well as progress and challenges in productive development policies in Latin America and the Caribbean, in addition to offering guidelines for countries and their territories to strengthen these agendas.
ECLAC said that this year’s study focuses particularly on the role of technological extension services and human talent in the transformation of the region’s economies.
In the report, ECLAC reiterates the need for countries in the region to scale up and strengthen their productive development policies (PDP), through a new vision of these policies. The goal is to increase productivity and, at the same time, create more and better jobs, with positive effects on the population’s well-being.
It said to bring together this double goal of productivity and employment, ECLAC has included in this edition the Productive Development and Employment Index (PDEI), an indicator that combines the evolution of both dimensions and allows for recognition of its contribution to the population’s well-being, beyond the traditional measurement of per capita GDP (gross domestic product).
According to this new indicator, the region showed improvement during 2025. However, it shows performance significantly below that achieved in 2008, when the index recorded its highest level during the period beginning in 2005.
The report also includes a deeper analysis of the situation regarding productivity and employment in 11 countries in the region in order to contribute to the design and implementation of productive development policies.
The adoption of technologies and the improvement of management practices are essential to increasing the productivity of companies, especially micro-, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), which in many cases operate far from the technological frontier, the study highlights.
The report analyzes the role of technological extension services (TES), an intervention that when properly applied has proven to be very effective in numerous countries around the world and includes assessments and specialized accompaniment to companies to facilitate the adoption, adaptation, and leveraging of available technologies.
To understand its scope in the region, ECLAC examined 25 policy documents in 17 countries, mapped 502 initiatives in 33 countries, and analyzed the operation of 17 active programs in eight countries.
One finding is that only eihght per centof the science, technology and innovation, and productive development policies reviewed include technological extension actions.
The results show that the regional offering is still fragmented and concentrated in the agricultural sector, which includes 68 per cent of the initiatives identified, while participation in the manufacturing sector and coordination with policies in science, technology and innovation remain limited. Most of these initiatives promote adoption of digital technologies.
The main obstacles include the lack of stable financing, the availability of specialized extension service programmes, and the weaknesses of evaluation systems. The report also warns that the incorporation of a gender perspective is still partial and not systematic.
In this scenario, ECLAC recommends prioritizing technological extension services as a strategic instrument in science, technology and innovation policies and productive development policies in order to improve productivity, create jobs, and reduce informality.
To achieve this, it proposes a decalogue of specific recommendations, including, among others, scaling up coverage without compromising the quality of accompaniment, professionalizing extension service programmes, developing hybrid models for providing services, and strengthening the evaluation of results.
The chapter dedicated to human talent examines the policies and strategies of ten countries. Although all of them recognize, to a greater or lesser degree, the importance of people’s capacities for productive development, this recognition has still not translated, overall, into sectoral assessments of skills gaps, specific instruments, or institutionalized coordination mechanisms, the report warns.
In fact, only three of the 10 countries analyzed have institutionalized coordination mechanisms for human talent and productive development policies. The report also identifies scarce coordination between organizations responsible for both agendas, as well as general assessments that do not allow for anticipation of the competencies that will be needed by different economic sectors.
To overcome these gaps, ECLAC proposes including and coordinating agendas for identifying and closing human talent gaps under productive development policies. To do so, it proposes six guidelines to strengthen these efforts.
They include linking training with sectoral productive development agendas; establishing permanent assessments of competency gaps; expanding training and certification instruments, and actively including the business sector.
“Since its first edition, the Panorama of Productive Development Policies in Latin America and the Caribbean has sought to contribute to the regional debate on the ‘whats’ and ‘hows’ to strengthen productive development policies, with proposals that make it possible to accelerate the productive transformation of our economies, increase their productivity, and improve employment conditions and well-being in the region,” noted Marco Llinás, Director of the Productive and Business Development Division of ECLAC.
CMC/ag/ir/2026