Launched in 2016, the inaugural GBF LATAM explored possible new synergies beyond its traditional export markets of the USA, Europe and China, focussing on potential connections between businesses in Dubai and the region. In the context of economic growth declining since 2010 (and actually going negative in 2016), Latin America’s leading economies searched for additional growth drivers at home and business partners who shared their ambition to be part of a new era of globalisation.

2018’s GBF continued that exploration, this time in the context of a pick-up of economic growth in 2017 and 2018. Governments and businesses across Latin America were taking bold steps to bring new dynamism to the private sector, dismantling obstacles to trade within Latin America and investigating new markets in order to build on growth. Potential synergies with Dubai, in areas such as agriculture and renewable energy, tourism, innovation and technology and in trade issues relating to logistics and distribution, were identified.

In 2020, Covid changed Latin America’s trajectory. The green shoots of economic recovery were trampled as closed borders and lockdowns hit the region’s economies harder than anywhere else in the world. In 2021, the region is still fighting to contain Covid and to revive their battered economies.

The Covid-19 pandemic shone a spotlight on longer-term structural problems such as income inequality and bureaucracy that have held back growth in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) economies for decades. There is now a strong impetus for reform that will empower people from across society to achieve their commercial goals, helping to rebuild economies post-Covid in a more sustainable way.