Welcome to a Marketplace Morning Report special, as we explore multiple forces, especially

economic forces shaping migration.

Our title is Barrier's to Entry, the cost of crossing the southern border.

I'm David Browncatchy up here's one episode surveying our coverage, about a half hour of

your time.

People move toward prosperity and away from the opposite.

Many economies in Central and South America have lagged the world in recovering from pandemic.

The World Bank recently directed $5 billion to help.

William Maloney is Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean at the World Bank.

Thank you for joining us.

Pleasure to be here.

Now, as the world faces inflation, interest rates have moved higher and that's not helping

Latin America, but it's not helping really anywhere in the world.

Why is Latin America lagging during this post-pandemic phase?

In the medium term, there are about four things that drive Latin American growth.

One is exactly what you just mentioned, which is interest rates, which are plateauing

a bit right now, but commodity prices enter and they've been falling.

Latin American growth in the G7 is critical and that's been rather slow and then growth

in China is really uncertain and all those things in a short run dictate that Latin American

growth is going to be rather slow.

The bigger concern for us is that over the longer term, we have these slow growth rates

as well.

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