LatinNews Regional Monitor: Brazil & Southern Cone - 02 August 2019

On 1 August, following a press conference on deforestation, Brazilian environmental NGO Observatório do Clima criticised the government led by President Jair Bolsonaro for presenting “a lie, a deception, and a false solution to the problem”.... Read More

* Brazil’s national statistics institute (Ibge) has released figures which show that industrial production fell by 0.6% in June, the second consecutive negative monthly result after a 0.1% decrease in May.... Read More

On 1 August, Paraguayan and Brazilian authorities signed the annulment of a bilateral agreement on the distribution of surplus energy from the bi-national Itaipú hydroelectric dam, the terms of which have sparked a political crisis for Paraguay’s President Mario Abdo Benítez.... Read More

* The Argentine government has launched a public tender to design and build the fourth gas pipeline for Vaca Muerta, a hydrocarbons deposit in Patagonia.... Read More

Paraguay’s President Mario Abdo Benítez is facing a major political crisis with his political opponents pushing for his impeachment over the signing of a controversial bilateral agreement with the Brazilian government on the distribution of electricity produced at the Itaipú binational hydroelectric dam.... Read More

“Brazil is transitioning away from an unsustainable fiscal path and towards a more open and competitive economic framework, which will remove obstacles to productivity growth,” the executive director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for Brazil, Alexandre Tombini, said in a statement published along with the July 2019 country report.... Read More

A meeting in Brasília on 29 July between Brazil’s Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo and his French counterpart, Jean-Yves Le Drian, was an opportunity for both to highlight the economic benefits that the European Union (EU)-Southern Common Market (Mercosur) trade deal will bring their countries.... Read More

With just two weeks left before the open, mandatory, and simultaneous primaries (Paso) ahead of the October general election, electoral campaigning has intensified in Argentina.... Read More

CHILE | Diesel spill in Patagonia.... Read More

A statement was published on the global anarchist network website ‘contrainfo’ on 27 July signed by a self-proclaimed anarchist group calling itself ‘Cómplices Sediciosos/Fracción por la Venganza’ in which it assumed responsibility for the two parcel bombs that were sent out through the post to two separate addresses in Chile’s capital two days earlier.... Read More