We are already forecasting a loss of at least 25 million jobs for this year 2020 and that figure may be worse depending on how the situation evolves in the next five or six months, estimated the economist who has just taken office after two decades in the bank.

For Jaramillo, Latin America has never experienced a crisis of this magnitude since there are historical records.

No other crisis had generated a drop in production and unemployment data as worrying as these, he said in a virtual interview from Nairobi, where he was posted as director for Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia and Uganda, and where he continues to remain due to travel restrictions.

Latin America and Caribbean continue to suffer the onslaught of the pandemic and has exceeded 4 million infections, forcing many countries to establish a confinement that generates a contraction in the economy and loss of employment, to try to stop a virus for which there is still no vaccine.

For this year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts a contraction of Latin American GDP of 9.4%, with a recovery of 3.7% in 2021.

The region - highly dependent on exports of oil and agricultural raw materials - came to this crisis with low growth rates of close to 0.1% in 2019 compared to the advance in world GDP of almost 3%.

With regard to the economic situation, Jaramillo said that this crisis has devastated many small and medium-sized companies, which are an important engine of employment in the region.

Many are going to disappear and are disappearing, we have news, and it is very dramatic because they are people who do not have many resources, people who have paid a high price for it, he said.