大宗商品市场疲软 拉美经济迎来"新常态"

LIMA, Peru — The president of Venezuela calls for budget cuts as plummeting oil prices slash the country’s export income. Peru relaxes environmental regulations to clear the way for major mining projects, hoping to lift production in the face of falling prices of copper, gold and other metals. In Brazil, hurt by slumping prices for iron and soybean exports, a new, business-friendly cabinet is expected to cut spending and eliminate tax breaks to shore up government finances.

秘鲁利马——随着油价暴跌，委内瑞拉的出口收入大幅度降低，于是该国总统开始呼吁减少预算。为了给大型矿业项目扫清道路，秘鲁也放宽了环境法规，希望能在铜、金和其他金属价格下跌的情况下，提高产量。在因为铁矿和大豆出口价格下跌而受到打击的巴西，支持商业的新内阁为了巩固政府财政，很可能会削减支出，取消税收减免政策。

For a decade, the continent was transformed by sustained economic growth and historic reductions in poverty, driven by a boom in prices for the region’s abundant commodities, including oil, natural gas, copper, gold, iron, soybeans and corn.

十年间，持续的经济增长和贫困程度的历史性降低改变了这个大陆。之所以会出现这些变化，是因为当地丰富的石油、天然气、铜、金、铁、大豆和玉米等商品的价格出现飙升。

But now that boom is over, prices for those products are falling, and questions hang over the region. Will the good times be followed by a bust, as has happened repeatedly over the decades? Will governments react as they have before by loading up on debt and ignoring the danger signs?

不过现在，这种繁荣的景象已经结束，前述产品的价格正在降低，该地区也面临着诸多问题。美好的时光过后，经济是否会发生崩溃，就像数十年来反复出现的情况那样？政府是否会像以往那样，做出增加负债，无视危险信号的反应？

Or will things be different this time?

或者，这一次情况将有所不同？

“We have entered into a new stage,” said José Antonio Ocampo, a former finance minister of Colombia who is a professor at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University in New York. “I don’t think governments have fully realized yet that this is so, and that they have to change their policy strategy.”

“我们进入了一个新阶段，”哥伦比亚前财政部长、目前在纽约哥伦比亚大学(Columbia University)国际与公共事务学院(School of International and Public Affairs)担任教授的何塞·安东尼奥·奥坎波(José Antonio Ocampo)表示。“我不认为政府已经充分认识到了目前的情况，而且他们必须改变自己的政策。”

Yet there are signs, he said, that many countries in the region are better positioned now than in the past to tackle the challenge.

他说，但是有迹象显示，与过去相比，该地区的许多国家都已经做了更好的准备来应对这些挑战。

“We are already in a period of slower economic growth, and the question is, ‘What’s next?’ ” said Jorge Familiar, the World Bank’s vice president for Latin America and the Caribbean. “Ten or 15 years ago we would be talking about crisis management, and right now we’re talking about growth strategies.”

“我们已经进入了经济增长放缓的时期，问题是，‘接下来会发生什么？’”世界银行(World Bank)负责拉丁美洲和加勒比地区的副行长豪尔赫·法米莉亚(Jorge Familiar)说。“10年或15年前，我们会谈论危机管理，而现在，我们谈论的是增长策略。”

Brazil, the continent’s economic giant and the seventh-largest economy in the world, according to the World Bank, encapsulates both the problems and the promise of the region.

世界银行表示，巴西是南美洲的经济巨头，也是世界第七大经济体。它既存在问题，也代表着该地区的希望。

After years of steady growth and poverty reduction, Brazil’s economy has stagnated. While there are many problems, including corruption and government missteps, the situation has been aggravated by falling prices for some of its main exports, including iron ore and soybeans.

经过多年的稳定增长和贫困削减，巴西经济已陷入停滞。这里存在腐败滋生和政府失策等很多问题，但是由于铁矿和大豆等巴西主要出口商品的价格下跌，情况发生了恶化。

President Dilma Rousseff, a leftist who was re-elected to a second term in October, has signaled that she will make economic growth a priority in her new term, choosing an economic team widely seen as being pro-business.

巴西总统迪尔玛·罗塞夫(Dilma Rousseff)是一个左派人士，今年10月，她再次当选。她已经表示，自己的新任期将把经济增长作为首要任务，她还挑选了一个被广泛认为对商业持支持态度的经济团队。

They have a chance of succeeding, Mr. Ocampo said, because Brazil has developed a large manufacturing sector that could be the beneficiary of the region’s new economic reality. When commodity prices are high, the currencies of exporting countries tend to rise in value. That can hurt other sectors of the economy, such as manufacturing, since a stronger currency means that exported manufactured goods become more expensive to foreign buyers.

奥坎波说，他们有机会成功，因为巴西已经发展出了一个规模庞大的制造行业，这个行业可能会从该地区的新经济形势中受益。商品价格高企时，出口国的货币就倾向于升值。这种情况可能会损害制造业等其他经济部门，因为货币升值后，出口产品对于外国买家而言就变贵了。

That cycle is now in reverse, with currencies in Brazil and several other Latin American countries depreciating. While that can increase inflation, as has happened already in Brazil, in the long run it could lead to growth in manufacturing exports.

现在，随着巴西和其他几个拉美国家的货币发生贬值，这种循环也出现了逆转。虽然这样会增加通货膨胀——巴西已经出现了这种情况——但是从长远来看，则很可能会促进制造业出口的增长。

The challenges are as great for Peru, which depends heavily on the mining operations that powered growth of more than 6 percent annually from 2002 to 2012. With metals prices now in retreat, the central bank predicts the economy will grow by just 3 percent this year.

对于秘鲁而言，挑战同样严峻。从2002年到2012年，秘鲁正是因为严重依赖采矿，才达到了超过6%的年增长率。目前，由于金属价格下跌，央行预计，今年的经济增长率仅为3%。

In response, the government of President Ollanta Humala has pushed stimulus measures that include increased government spending and tax cuts. Mr. Humala has also sought to clear the way for more mining, oil and gas projects, hoping to compensate for falling prices by increasing a metals production that remains profitable, if less so.

作为回应，奥良塔·乌马拉(Ollanta Humala)总统领导的政府推了行包括增加政府开支、减税在内的刺激举措。乌马拉还设法扫清障碍，开启更多的采矿、石油及天然气工程，希望通过增加金属产量抵消价格下跌带来的损失，金属即便价格不高，仍属于盈利商品。

But many of those projects have been stalled by environmental concerns and stiff opposition in local communities. Part of the government’s new strategy is to streamline or scale back environmental regulations, including efforts to speed up the process of evaluating environmental impact statements, setting penalties for officials who do not meet deadlines and rolling back recent increases in fines for many environmental violations.

但其中很多工程都因为环境问题及当地社区的强烈反对而被搁置。政府的部分新策略是精简或缩减环境法规，比如加快对环境影响报告的评估，处罚那些没有及时完成任务的官员，消除最近对破坏环境行为增加的罚款数额。

“It just got cheaper to pollute,” said Ricardo Giesecke, a former environment minister who is critical of the changes.

前环保部长里卡多·吉塞克(Ricardo Giesecke)对这些改变提出批评，称“这会减少污染环境需要付出的代价。”

Alonso Segura, the Peruvian finance minister, said the measures should help the country resume economic growth similar to that of recent years.

秘鲁财政部长阿隆索·赛古拉(Alonso Segura)表示，这些举措将帮助秘鲁推动经济发展，使其恢复到近些年来的水平。

“We want to sustain it at or close to 6 percent over the medium term,” he said. New mining projects will enter into production next year while others are expected to increase production, he said. Infrastructure projects expected to get underway, like a Lima mass transit train line and a gas pipeline in southern Peru, will also generate jobs and economic activity.

他说，“我们希望到中期时，将增长率维持在6%或接近6%的水平。”他表示，新的采矿项目将于明年开始进入生产阶段，其他煤矿也将增加产量。即将开启的基础设施项目也会带动就业和经济活动，比如利马的共同交通铁路和秘鲁南部的天然气管道。

But Francisco Rodríguez, an economist with Bank of America Merrill Lynch in New York, said that optimistic predictions of new mines and other projects had fallen short in the past, often because of local opposition. He also pointed to the country’s inability so far to tame its appetite for imported goods, a hangover from the years of high commodity prices.

但纽约美银美林(Bank of America Merrill Lynch)经济学家弗朗西斯科·罗德里格斯(Francisco Rodríguez)表示，过去缺乏这种对新矿及其他项目的乐观预测，这通常是因为这些项目会遭到当地民众的反对。他还指出，秘鲁无法抑制对进口商品的需求，这是多年来物价偏高导致的结果。

“They don’t seem to have accepted that 6 percent growth is not a reasonable objective for Peru, and that means they haven’t accepted that the commodities boom is over,” he said. “That’s called denial.”

“他们似乎并不认为6%的增长率对秘鲁来说是一个不合理的目标，这意味着他们不认为大宗商品市场的繁荣时期已经结束，”他说。“他们拒绝接受现实。”

Perhaps no country is more troubled, or more closely tied to the ups and downs of commodity prices, than Venezuela, which last year received more than 95 percent of its export income from oil. But oil prices have tumbled since the summer, with the price of the benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude dropping to less than $60 in December from more than $100 a barrel in July. President Nicolás Maduro said recently that the collapse had cut his country’s hard currency income by about a third, but the impact is expected to become even more acute next year.

或许与其他国家相比，委内瑞拉受物价起伏的影响更大，受到的困扰更多。去年，石油收入在该国出口收入所占比例超过了95%。但油价自今年夏天以来不断下跌，今年12月，作为基准的美国西德克萨斯中质原油(West Texas Intermediate)的价格从7月的每桶100美元(约合620元人民币)跌至不足60美元。总统尼古拉斯·马杜罗(Nicolás Maduro)最近表示，油价下跌导致该国的硬通货收入减少了将近三分之一，但影响在明年会变得更加严重。

The Venezuelan economy was in bad shape before the oil price drop, with inflation of more than 60 percent, by far the highest rate in the region, and chronic shortages of consumer goods — a state of affairs for which, rightly or wrongly, most Venezuelans blame Mr. Maduro.

油价下跌之前，委内瑞拉的经济状况就已经非常糟糕，通货膨胀率超过了60%——迄今为止该地区的最高水平，长期缺少消费品，且不管对与错，大多数委内瑞拉人指责马杜罗导致了这种事态的出现。

Yet Mr. Maduro has only sharpened investors’ fears by attributing the country’s problems to enemies waging an “economic war” aimed at toppling his socialist-inspired government. It is not clear whether they were soothed when Mr. Maduro said in a speech this month that in 2015 he would put aside most of his other duties to focus exclusively on the economy.

但马杜罗将这些问题归咎于那些发动“经济战争”，以推翻他所领导的社会主义政府的敌人，结果加剧了投资商的担忧。马杜罗本月发表演讲称，他将在2015年撇开大部分任务，集中力量解决经济问题，目前尚不清楚，在马杜罗发表上述讲话后，这种担忧是否有所缓解。