LatinNews Daily - 06 December 2019

On 5 December, heads of state from the four Southern Common Market (Mercosur) countries – Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay – met in the municipality of Bento Gonçalves in Brazil’s southern state of Rio Grande do Sul for the trade bloc’s 55th summit.... Read More

On 5 December Ecuador’s foreign minister José Valencia said the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) was wrong to attribute violence during October’s widespread protests to state security forces, and invited the organisation to return for further investigation.... Read More

* Colombia’s national statistics institute (Dane) has released new figures which show monthly inflation in November 2019 was 0.10%, bringing the annual figure to 3.84%.... Read More

* The Instituto Aço Brasil, Brazil’s steel industry organisation, has reported that the sector’s economic performance in 2019 has been below expectations, due to a weak internal market in the first half of the year, and a turbulent external market.... Read More

On 5 December Honduras’s foreign minister Lisandro Rosales told reporters that an evaluation currently being undertaken by the Organization of American States (OAS)-sponsored Mission to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (Maccih) would determine its future in the country.... Read More

* Honduras’s central bank (BCH) has released new figures which show exports in the first nine months of 2019 reached US$$3.25bn, down 7.1% on the same period in 2018.... Read More

On 5 December Mexico’s federal senate approved Margarita Ríos-Farjat as a new magistrate for the 11-member supreme court (SCJN) for a 15-year term.... Read More

* The Mexican institute of industrial property (Impi), Mexico’s official trademark and patent administration body, has announced plans to join forces with other institutions such as Asociación Nacional de Abogados de Empresa (Anade), a legal association dedicated to promoting the interests of corporate lawyers and the companies they serve, the American Chamber of Commerce of Mexico (AmCham) and the Mexican Chapter of the International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (Amppi) to address the use of pirated goods, an industry that costs the formal economy more than US$2.2bn per year.... Read More

On 5 December the Universidad Católica Argentina (UCA) revealed that the poverty rate in Argentina in the third quarter reached 40.8%, climbing by more than seven percentage points on the same time a year earlier. Analysis:... Read More

* Chile’s central bank (BCCh) has released its latest monetary policy report (Ipom) in which it now projects 1% growth for the country in 2019, down from its forecast range of 2.25%-2.75% in the previous Ipom, published in September.... Read More