exports, circa 2019

Inside the LAC region, some countries are not members of any of these groups: Chile, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, 12 Mexico and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. While these have not fully integrated with any such collective integration group, they are part of other trade agreements among LAC countries. The Eurasian Economic Union is a more recent economic process than those mentioned above. As described earlier, it went through several iterations, but EAEU was eventually founded with its current membership in 2015. Among those integration processes, CACM has the highest share of intraregional trade. It steadily increased over the last 58 years and in 2018, the intraregional exports reached 31% of total exports (excluding free zones exports). Though this percentage seems small when compared to integration groups like the European Union, with an intraregional export share above 60%, it offers an opportunity to expand the production of high value-added goods. This experience was the case for CACM and MERCOSUR countries, in which more than half of their intraregional exports are manufactured with some grade of technology incorporated. For CAN, CARICOM and EAEU, the percentage of products rather than primary and NBRM in intraregional exports constitute correspondingly 39%, 19% and 45%. Table II.2 looks at a selected number of countries and their primary export markets. The high level of dependence for Central American countries on CACM is immediately clear. The other noteworthy observation is that Mexico, despite its size does not play an important role as an export destination for most countries, due to its deep trade integration with the North American market.

Table II.2 Selected Latin America and the Caribbean countries: intraregional exports, circa 2019 (Percentages)

Exporters Argentina Belize Bolivia (Plur. State of) Brazil Brazil Caribbean Central America Mexico South America 50 3 3 3 42

0 81 14 1 4

39

0 1

4 0

7 0

13 59

75

Chile Colombia 30 12 3 14 6 26 13 11 49 38

Costa Rica El Salvador 1 0 14 5 71 89 9 5 6 1

Guatemala Jamaica Mexico

1 1 20 6 74 6 76 5 32 11 1 0 6 19 42

Paraguay Peru 46 26 0 3 1 8 0 7 52 57

Uruguay 48 4 2 8 38

Source: Prepared by the authors, on the basis of United Nations Commodity Trade Database (UN Comtrade Database) [online database] https://comtrade.un.org/. Note: Green and dark green cells indicate intraregional export shares of more than 30%. Yellow cells point out intraregional exports between 1% and 30% share. Red cells imply intraregional exports of less than 1%.

12 The Dominican Republic is member of the Central American Integration System since 2013, though not of its Common

Market.

When analysed by country, intraregional trade is heterogeneous inside both LAC and EAEU. In 2018, LAC countries on average directed 32% of their overall exports to their regional market. For EAEU countries, the corresponding indicator constitutes 25% in the same year. However, as shown in figure II.2, the percentage varies widely in both regions. In LAC, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Dominica (in 2012) showed the highest intraregional export shares, at 86% and 81%, respectively. In both cases, they exported more than 65% of their goods to the CARICOM, their economic integration group. The same occurs with other countries like Paraguay, Barbados, El Salvador, or the Plurinational State of Bolivia, which exported more to their economic groups, than to the rest of the region. In EAEU, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia showed the highest intraregional export percentages, 41%, 32% and 28%, respectively. However, in both regions there are countries for which the scenario is different: the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Suriname, Bahamas, Mexico —in the LAC region, the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan— in EAEU. The intraregional export shares of the listed States have been inferior to 10%.13 For Mexico, the share of intraregional trade is smaller: only 5% to the LAC region of the country’s export is dedicated for to the LAC region. A similar scenario can be observed in EAEU, where the Russian Federation, its largest exporter, sells only a small fraction of its goods in EAEU (9%).

Figure II.2 Eurasian Economic Union and Latin America and the Caribbean: intraregional exports inside their regions by country, circa 2018 (Percentages)

90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

Venezuela (Bol. Rep. of) (2013) Suriname Bahamas (2015) Mexico Jamaica (2017) Russian Federation Kazakhstan Peru Saint Kitts and Nevis (2017) Chile Dominican Republic (2017) Brazil Cuba (2006) Honduras (2017) Nicaragua Belize Guyana Ecuador Costa Rica Armenia Saint Lucia (2017) Uruguay Colombia Kyrgyzstan Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Trinidad and Tobago (2015) Belarus Guatemala (2017) Bolivia (Plur. St. of) El Salvador Grenada (2008) Panama (2016) Barbados Paraguay Dominica (2012) Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

Source: Prepared by the authors, on the basis of United Nations Commodity Trade Database (UN Comtrade Database) [online database] https://comtrade.un.org/.

13 During the last available year for each country.