LatinNews Daily - 20 June 2019

On 19 June, members of the national directorate of special forces (DNFE) of the Honduras national police (PNH) announced a strike in demand of better working conditions, adding that they would not “repress the Honduran people”.... Read More

On 19 June, the Colombian army announced that a leader of the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) insurgent guerrillas in the northern Bolívar department had handed himself over to the authorities.... Read More

* Peru’s Economy Minister Carlos Oliva has announced that the government has adjusted its projections for national GDP growth this year from 4.2% to 3.7%.... Read More

On 19 June, Brazil’s Justice Minister Sérgio Moro appeared before the federal senate’s constitution and justice committee (CCJ) to respond to questions relating to leaked messages revealed by news site The Intercept Brasil which cast doubt over the integrity of his work as a judge on the ‘Lava Jato’ corruption investigation.... Read More

* Brazil’s national industry confederation (CNI), a private sector lobby, has released its index of industrial business confidence (ICEI) for June, which stands at 56.9 (on a scale of 0 to 100).... Read More

* The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has approved a US$200m loan to the Salvadorean government to help finance El Salvador’s 2019 general state budget.... Read More

On 19 June, Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced that several fertiliser plants bought by state-owned oil company Pemex have come under scrutiny for suspected corruption.... Read More

* Mexico’s senate has ratified the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) regional trade deal meaning that Mexico has become the first of the three countries to approve the agreement.... Read More

On 19 June, leaders from the Coordinadora Nacional Intersectorial (CNI) umbrella peasant farmers grouping said that they will maintain their protest camp in Paraguay’s capital, Asunción, until the national government fully honours the commitments it has previously made to the subsistence farming sector.... Read More

* Argentina’s national statistics institute (Indec) has released new figures which show that the national unemployment rate has increased to 10.1% of the population in the first quarter of 2019, up from 9.1% in the same quarter in 2018.... Read More