XVIII General Assembly of Ministers and High Level Authorities on Housing and Urbanization in Latin America and the Caribbean (MINURVI) Montego Bay, Jamaica de julio 2009 Sustainable Development and Human Settlements Division ECLAC Raquel Szalachman

Social Expenditure on Housing and Urban Development for some Latin American and Caribbean countries

Presentation: I.General information II.Regional Panorama III.Main findings of the study: Comparative Analysis IV.Final comments

I. General information Constant or diminishing rates for housing social spending as a proportion of GDP Different registrations styles and different concepts included In 2006 MINURVI, Ministers and High Level Authorities, established the will to know the real value of housing and urbanism spending. The first approach was through a survey sent to the Housing Ministers We found out that the real expenditure source was at National Accounting and at the Budget Offices and/or General Comptrollers. We started with a pilot study for only 3 countries In this occasion we have extended it to 11 countries, which means 8 additional countries.

INTRODUCTION Objectives Policy ToolsRESOURCESNeeds SOCIAL SPENDING Requirements Requirements REDISTRIBUTIVE IMPACTS

Regional Panorama

Regional GDP was up by 4.2% in 2008, completing a sixth consecutive year of economic growth LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN: GDP GROWTH, 2008 (Percentages) Fuente: Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), sobre la base de cifras oficiales.

LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN: EMPLOYMENT AND UNEMPLOYMENT Growth has been coupled with improvements in labour-market indicators Fuente: Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), sobre la base de cifras oficiales.

In 2009, the regions growth is expected to slow dramatically LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN: GROWTH FORECASTS FOR 2009 (%) Fuente: Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), sobre la base de cifras oficiales.

ECLAC forecasts a growth rate of -1.7% for 2009 Fuente: Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), sobre la base de cifras oficiales.

The 6 biggest economies of Latin America have experienced a 30% fall in exports in 1Q LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN: REAL GROWTH RATE OF QUARTERLY EXPORTS (% change between Q t and Q t-4 ) Fuente: Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), sobre la base de cifras oficiales.

In a number of countries remittances are showing a major halt LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN: WORKERS REMMITANCES (Annual percentage increase) Fuente: Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), sobre la base de cifras oficiales.

The Caribbean and Central America will suffer the most from the expected drop in tourism revenues LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN: TOURISM-RELATED SERVICE EXPORTS, 2007 (Percentages of GDP) 40.8% Fuente: Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), sobre la base de cifras oficiales.

Main Findings of the Study: Comparative Analyses

Housing and Related Services Social Expenditure as a percentage of GDP

Urbanization Social Expenditure as a percentage of GDP

Social Community Expenditure as a percentage of GDP

Water supplying expenditure as a percentage of GDP

Public lighting system expenditure as a percentage of GDP

Housing and Community Services Expenditure as a percentage of GDP

Country comparisons Panama Bolivia Guatemala Jamaica

Country comparisons ParaguayPerú HondurasCosta Rica

Country comparisons The tree countries of the Pilot Study Argentina Chile El Salvador

FINAL COMMENTS It is possible to use a common methodology But, the contact with the Budget Offices or Comptroller are absolutely necessary in order to check the web information. This was mainly an statistic exercise in order to find out what are the real expenses Therefore, some important subjects werent analyzed: –Quality and efficiency of the expenditure –Expenditure sustainability –Redistribution impact Next steps: - Income sources (in or outside the country) - Effort made by the own families for housing access - Redistributive impact of the social expenditure

FINAL COMMENTS Verification of the information was very difficult Countries that were not included have no information on their web pages and it was impossible to contact them If there is some interest, the methodology could be transmitted to the different countries of the region. Next step: - Income sources (own or external) - Family efforts for social housing access - Redistribution impact of expenditure

FINAL COMMENTS It is important to know the amount of housing and urban development expenditure, but isolated this knowledge is only an accounting exercise. What is more important is to analyze the expenditure efficiency. This means that it is necessary to know the amount of the housing and urban development needs (deficit). As a matter of fact if the housing and urbanization expenditure is high or low will depend on the housing and urbanization requirements. Which means the next step should be to estimate housing and urbanization deficits.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH Raquel Szalachman Sustainable Development and Human Settlements Division CEPAL