Speaking at a meeting of the boards of governors of the Inter-American Development Bank in South Korea, Jose Juan Ruiz, the chief economist and manager of the research department of the IDB, said that this year the "Short-term growth in Latin America is going to be poor. We're going to have a growth rate below 2 percent."

The Spanish economist predicted that 2015 would signal the fourth consecutive year that the region's Gross Domestic Product growth would be slower than that of the previous year.

The IDB had previously projected that Latin America would have a better growth of 2.2 percent in 2015.

Various reasons were cited for Latin America’s current sluggish growth.

Some of the factors include an overall weakness of the euro zone, an economic slowdown in China, and a decline in the price of raw materials.

As reported by Fox News Latino, Ruiz said the United States was the sole "exception" in terms of being the only economy in experiencing a full mode of recovery.

"The good news is that this is not the start of a Latin American crisis because the region's countries have significantly improved their macroeconomic position,” said Ruiz, who has held various governmental positions in the Ministries of the Economy, Finance and Commerce.

"This time Latin America is not doing something different from the rest of the world. It's not a Latin American crisis in a world that's growing, but rather a decline in the region's short-term growth in a world that appears trapped in low growth rates."

Ruiz insisted on the need for structural reforms, particularly in the area of education, saying, "Latin America is growing slowly, not because it's creating too few jobs or investing too little. Its growth level is low because its level of productivity is low."