In this April 3, 2020 photo, women wearing protective face masks stand at a safe distance to help curb the spread of the new coronavirus, as they wait for food assigned to their children outside a school in the largely indigenous Xesuj village, Guatemala, where many residents depend on remittances, almost all from the US. The devastation wrought by COVID-19 across the developed world is cutting into the financial lifelines for people across Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and Asia. (Photo: AP)

WASHINGTON, DC, United States (CMC) — The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) says while tax revenues in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) increased to 23.1 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) on average in 2018, these gains are now under threat as a result of the region’s deteriorating fiscal outlook, which has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the global economic crisis.

According to the newly released edition of the ‘Revenue Statistics in Latin America in the Caribbean (LAC)’, the increase of 0.4 percentage points from their level in 2017 is the highest level of tax revenues ever recorded in the region.

However, the data reveals that LAC tax revenues remain far below the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), averaging 34.3 per cent in 2018.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/idb-says-caribbean-s-tax-revenue-under-threat-amid-deteriorating-outlook_193778