LatinNews Daily - 27 July 2018

Development: On 26 July thousands of people took part in a protest march in Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires, in rejection of the two recent decrees issued by President Mauricio Macri aimed at reforming the role of the armed forces by assigning them more public security duties.... Read More

Development: On 26 July, Colombia’s outgoing president, Juan Manuel Santos, announced that the peace negotiations between his government and the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) leftist insurgent guerrillas being held in Havana, Cuba, were close to reaching an agreement on a bilateral ceasefire.... Read More

Peru: The Federación de la Nacionalidad Acuar del Perú (Fenap) indigenous organisation has announced its opposition to an oil exploration project granted to Chilean energy firm GeoPark in the ‘Lote 64’, an area which encompasses an important part of the ancestral lands of the Achuar peoples located near the basin of the Pastaza river in the Peru’s Amazonian area.... Read More

Development: On 26 July the national confidence index (INC) complied by the Associação Comercial de São Paulo (ACSP) business association showed a rise in consumer confidence in all regions of Brazil.... Read More

* Brazil’s central bank (BCB) has reported that the country posted a current account deficit of US$3.58bn with the rest of the world in the first semester of the year.... Read More

Development: On 26 July, Nayib Bukele, the popular businessman-turned-politician and presidential candidate of the centre-left Cambio Democrático (CD) party in El Salvador’s February 2019 presidential election, announced that he will run instead as the presidential candidate of the centre-right opposition Gran Alianza por la Unidad Nacional (Gana) party.... Read More

Panama: Finance & Economy Minister Gustavo Valderrama has formally presented the executive’s 2019 draft budget to the national assembly for debate.... Read More

Development: On 26 July US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told the US Senate Appropriations Committee that, with regard to an agreement in the current renegotiations of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), “we are probably looking at having to have some conclusion during the course of August”.... Read More

* Local civil-society group Asamblea Nacional de Usuarios de la Energía Eléctrica (Anuee), which represents over 70,000 electricity users, has staged a demonstration in Mexico City in rejection of the entry of foreign firms into Mexico’s electricity generation and distribution market.... Read More

Chile: Moody’s Investors Service, the international credit ratings agency, has downgraded Chile’s sovereign credit rating from ‘Aa3’ to ‘A1’ to reflect “a gradual but broad-based deterioration in Chile’s credit profile”.... Read More