Escenarios para la economía uruguaya en las próximas dos décadas: una aproximación

This document starts looking at the long run’s growth process of the Uruguayan economy, showing that this country had a very poor performance contrasting with the world economy’s rates of expansion. In the last years, the economic integration linked Uruguayan growth very closely with Argentina, whose long run development performance is even worse, specially because of its extremely high volatility. Two probable scenarios for the world economy in the next two decades are considered, correlated to plausible trajectories for the economies of Brasil and Argentina that are also designed given some of their main present characteristics and tendencies. After stating some propositions about the likely evolution of Mercosur’s economic integration process, projecting exports possibilities for many sectors and translating this to income growth rate using a estimated Input Output Matrix, four scenarios are proposed to the evolution of the Uruguayan economy. They combine a good or bad regional performance with more or less productive innovation in this country. Some of the necessary conditions to move to the better road are discussed, and it is argued that this conditions imply important changes: the worse scenario is the one most closely matching the long run tendencies of this economy.