Economy & Business - May 2024

Guatemala’s environment ministry is moving to shut down a gold mine as part of a wider re-evaluation of the sector, the latest move signalling uncertainty for miners in the region.... Read More

It has been a rough few weeks for Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro.... Read More

It remains far from certain that Venezuela’s 28 July presidential election will be free or fair.... Read More

The international credit ratings agency Moody’s announced on 27 April that it had once again lowered Bolivia’s credit rating, this time from Caa1 to Caa3, although it did upgrade the country’s outlook from negative to stable.... Read More

The international credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P) has downgraded Peru’s long term foreign currency credit rating from BBB to BBB-, the lowest ‘investment grade’ rating on S&P’s scale.... Read More

ECUADOR | Noboa gets ball rolling on Yasuní oil ban.... Read More

When Brazil’s central bank (BCB) decided to reduce the size of its interest rate cuts in early May, it cited increased uncertainty over the country’s public finances as a reason for a more hawkish stance.... Read More

After nearly six months as president of Argentina, the radical libertarian Javier Milei has scored a number of advances in fixing the country’s battered finances and eliminating decades-old distortions in the economy.... Read More

Chilean steel producers were thrown a lifeline when President Gabriel Boric in April imposed six-month anti-dumping tariffs against Chinese steel imports.... Read More

ARGENTINA | YPF improves its results in Q1.... Read More

Costa Rican export industry associations have called on the central bank (BCCR) to take action over the continued appreciation of the colón against the US dollar, blaming exchange rates for the recent shuttering of companies and associated job losses.... Read More

Over the last decade Jamaica has notched up a highly unusual victory in a long running regional saga.... Read More

In April the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) announced a US$20m donation to Cuba to help build a solar energy park in Isla de la Juventud, the second largest Cuban island (after Cuba’s mainland).... Read More

Efforts by Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley to negotiate a trail-blazing debt-for-climate swap are advancing.... Read More

NICARAGUA | Remittances up.... Read More

Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is taking his fight against neoliberalism to the very end of his term after pushing major pension reforms through congress in April, with the first payout potentially due a day before elections on 2 June.... Read More

Mexico is consolidating its position as China’s gateway to the Americas with the inauguration on 11 May of China’s biggest airline’s first non-stop service to Mexico – and all Latin America – in what is being billed as the new aerial Silk Route.... Read More

On 1 May, Mexico’s national day of the worker, business organisations including leading private sector lobby, Coparmex, and the association of human capital businesses, Amech, stressed the need for an increase in labour productivity.... Read More

On 1 May a group of minors from the Tzotzil indigenous group marched in the city of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas state, to call for better conditions for working children.... Read More

MEXICO | Gov’t hails record FDI.... Read More