This week we're examining multiple forces, especially economic forces, shaping migration.

The series is barriers to entry, the cost of crossing the southern border.

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.

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.

Both 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.

So this suggests we have deeper structural problems that we need to work on.

By the way, there's an irony that you mentioned in the earlier part of your answer.

So worried about inflation, but actually some commodity prices, for instance oil, has

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