SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Foreign direct investment in Latin America and the Caribbean is likely to plunge by around 50% in 2020, as the region struggles to confront the coronavirus pandemic, a U.N. agency said in a report issued on Wednesday. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) said Latin America had received $161 billion in foreign direct investment in 2019, a 7.8% drop from 2019. The agency said 2020 would likely be far worse - placing it among the hardest hit regions globally. “As a consequence of the crisis derived from the COVID-19 pandemic, we are expecting a fall of between 45% and 55%,” the agency said in its report. The agency said policies designed to attract foreign direct investment have been successful in helping bolster some industries in the past decade. But they not necessarily overlapped with those that boost national productivity and advance goals of inclusive, sustainable development, leaving its overall impact muted. “[Foreign direct investment] offers great opportunities to move towards a new sustainable economy ”, said the agency’s chief, Alicia Barcena. “It is urgent we recover the role of industrial policy as an instrument of transformation,” he remarked. Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Peru received the majority of foreign direct investment in 2019 - and have been among the hardest hit by coronavirus in 2020.