Fiscal Panorama of Latin America and the Caribbean, 2020: Fiscal policy amid the crisis arising from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic

Abstract

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has generated a health, human and economic crisis without precedent in the past century. The region has responded rapidly, adopting packages of fiscal measures of diverse magnitude and scope. In this context, fiscal policy must play a key role in mitigating the human and economic impact in the short term, while also continuing to provide the impulse for achieving sustainable and inclusive growth in a post-COVID-19 world. As well as analysing the fiscal policy challenges of the current crisis, the Fiscal Panorama of Latin America and the Caribbean, 2020 provides a broad overview of the problems of tax evasion in the region. It looks at the challenges of measuring tax evasion and the measures the countries are taking to tackle it. It also compares the functional allocation of public expenditure in the countries of the region, as a factor that has implications for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.