Uruguay

Abstract

The economic crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected Uruguay’s economy. In 2020, gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 5.9% annually. The impact of the crisis has affected, above all, the most vulnerable groups. In 2020, the poverty rate based on latest international comparable estimations has reached 5.1%, increasing by two percentage points, compared to a year earlier, although it continues to be one of the lowest rates in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and considerably below the regional average (30.9%). The quality of health services helped cushion the crisis. In 2020, 75.1% of people in Uruguay declared being satisfied with the quality of health care, just two percentage points lower than ten years earlier. This proportion is much higher than in LAC (48.2%) and even higher than the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average (70.7%). Uruguay stands out as the country with the highest public expenditures on health care in LAC: 9.3% of GDP, compared to 6.8% average in LAC and 8.8% in the OECD. Although the pandemic affected the education system as well, Uruguay was among the LAC countries that managed to minimise disruption in education for students. Between March 2020 and May 2021, schools were fully closed for 14 weeks, much less than the LAC average (26 weeks) and below the OECD average (15 weeks). Moreover, during the weeks of closure, online learning helped mitigate the negative impact on students. In Uruguay, 47.4% of schools had access to effective online learning, more than two times higher than the LAC average (32.5%), although slightly below the OECD average (54.1%).