LatinNews Daily - 28 June 2018

Development: On 27 June Colombia’s national senate approved a bill outlining the procedural regulations for the transitional justice system (JEP) created by the peace accord that the Colombian government signed with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) leftist guerrillas in 2016, which includes two amendments introduced by the right-wing Centro Democrático (CD, Uribistas) party.... Read More

Peru: Peru’s foreign trade & tourism ministry (Mincetur) has reported that Peruvian cotton garment exports to Brazil increased by 90% to US$15.7m year-on-year in the first four months of the year.... Read More

Development: Brazil’s federal congress delayed until 3 July a vote to fast-track two key energy bills that could have raised over R$100bn (US$26.1bn) for the cash-strapped federal government. Significance: There’s increasingly little chance that the legislature will pass anything before congressional recess begins in mid-July.... Read More

*Brazil’s President Michel Temer has announced that the country has formally ratified the 2013 Arms Trade Treaty (ATT).... Read More

Development: On 27 June the local press reported that the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Honduras had expressed concerns about the lack of transparency surrounding the process of electing the new attorney general (AG) and deputy AG.... Read More

Nicaragua: The president of Nicaragua’s central bank (BCN) Ovidio Reyes has further lowered Nicaragua’s GDP growth forecast for the year to a range of 0.5%-1.5% as a result of the ongoing crisis which erupted mid-April, caused by the government crackdown on anti-government protesters which has resulted in 285 deaths, on the latest figures from the local human rights NGO Asociación Nicaragüense Pro Derechos Humanos (ANPDH).... Read More

Development: On 27 June, the final day of the offical electoral campaign ahead of Mexico's 1 July general election, the clear frontrunner for the presidency, Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the lefitst Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (Morena) party, declared that Mexico was on the verge of beginning “the fourth transformation in [the country’s] history”.... Read More

*Mexico’s national banking and securities commission (CNBV) has authorised a new unit of Bank of China Ltd, one of the four biggest state-owned commercial banks in China, to begin operations in Mexico.... Read More

Development: On 27 June Chile’s supreme court sentenced former police agents from the disbanded national intelligence directorate (Dina), Chile’s secret police under the military government led by General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), and a retired military officer for their responsibility in the crimes of qualified kidnapping and homicide, respectively.... Read More

Argentina: Marcos Peña, Argentina’s cabinet chief, has said that the negative impact of the current drought which has been afflicting the country has led the government to revise down its economic growth estimate for 2018 by one percentage point to 1%-2%.... Read More