Latin America’s biggest economies face close to zero growth over the next five years if the developed world does not pull out of the global economic crisis during the second half of 2009, the Inter-American Development Bank warned on Tuesday.

The IADB said Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela would grow by an average of just 1.9 per cent a year between 2009 and 2013 if the developed world began recovering this year. If not, it warned, the rate of growth would collapse to 0.1 per cent a year, down from an average of 5.8 per cent between 2003 and 2007.