The Southern city of Curitiba, in Brazil, has become an important location for a high-level global debate on the business landscape of Latin America. The EBANX Summit 2018 brought together some of the world's top market experts to talk about economy, logistics, consumption, and opportunities for global companies across Latin America, besides gathering top executives from the largest digital commerce stores in the world, to discuss the market in the region.

On Wednesday, 3, Lindsay Lehr, senior director of payment practices at Americas Market Intelligence (AMI) and a keynote speaker at the EBANX Summit 2018, spoke about the recovery trends and opportunities in Latin America. 

According to analysis of data from entities such as the World Bank, the IMF, and

the United Nations, brought up by Lehr during her speech, by 2021, Latin America will have recovered the $1 trillion US dollars lost between 2015 and 2016, making its GDP back to the $6.5 trillion US dollars rate.

Lehr also spoke about specific strengths of some of the major Latin American economies, which explain the recovery trend of the region as a whole. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) goes on and leaves the Mexican economy in an optimistic phase. In Brazil, controlled inflation and the constant increase of people's expenses after the crisis also show a recovery.

The moment for digital commerce in Latin America is now 

In addition to macroeconomics data, Lehr also addressed the consumption of products and services through technology, positioning the region as a market that should be on global company's radar. For instance, ecommerce, which has CAGR of 20%. The penetration and use of the Internet by Latin Americans were also identified as opportunities: Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina are respectively, in the second, sixth and eighth positions in the top 10 countries with more weekly hours spent on the internet.

According to Lehr's presentation, a great part of LatAm's technology needs will be serviced from abroad. Being one of the fastest-growing IT markets in the world, with CAGR of 5.5% through 2021, and having high rates of internet penetration, it is ready, and eager, to consume goods, services, and digital goods from cross-border companies.