Economy & Business - January 2024

Nayib Bukele is expected to easily win a controversial second presidential term in El Salvador’s February election and the country’s economic prospects have improved slightly, although his policies could spell trouble in the future.... Read More

With 107 votes in favour, Ecuador’s 137-member national assembly voted on 19 December to approve a tax reform bill submitted by President Daniel Noboa, who took office the previous month.... Read More

Given that Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro has lost his majority in congress and that his approval ratings remain near all-time lows, he is putting up quite a fight to keep his statist reform agenda alive.... Read More

It wasn’t long after the US lifted economic sanctions on Venezuela before foreign oil executives started pouring into Caracas to tap into the world’s largest hydrocarbon reserves.... Read More

ECUADOR | S&P lowers outlook due to gang violence.... Read More

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ended his first year in office with some economic fireworks.... Read More

The economic measures announced by Argentina’s President Javier Milei didn’t come as a shock only because he had already laid out many of them before taking office on 10 December.... Read More

After a year in which little more could have gone wrong for Chile’s President Gabriel Boric, there may be some light at the end of the tunnel in 2024.... Read More

URUGUAY | Year ends on report of Q3 contraction.... Read More

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Corte-IDH) has ordered Guatemala to adopt new laws on indigenous land rights in a ruling on the country’s massive Fénix nickel mine, which could have implications for other mining projects in the country and the region more widely.... Read More

Cuba’s economy had a tough time in 2023 and a package of new austerity measures unveiled in December will do relatively little to bring relief in 2024.... Read More

Prime Minister Andrew Holness ended the year by hailing Jamaica’s good economic performance, highlighting strong growth, low unemployment, and healthy public works programmes including road improvements and residential home building.... Read More

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), an international organisation headquartered in Switzerland, has published economic assessments of proposals to reduce plastics pollution in Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, and St Lucia.... Read More

NICARAGUA | New FTA with China takes effect.... Read More

Business groups in Mexico have been critical of the nationalist rhetoric and interventionism of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, as well as of his ineffective security policies and his inability, so far, to fire up economic growth.... Read More

China’s ministry for trade has dismissed US concerns over Chinese investment in Mexico, stating that “no third party has the right to interfere in practical cooperation between China and Mexico”.... Read More

A new report from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Eclac) has revealed that poverty and inequality have fallen under Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who took office in December 2018.... Read More

MEXICO | GFCF picks up.... Read More