LatinNews Daily - 13 March 2020

On 12 March, Economy Minister Paulo Guedes announced the creation of a group to monitor the economic impacts of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic in Brazil, and a series of measures targeting the demographic most vulnerable to the disease.... Read More

On 12 March, Venezuela’s de facto president, Nicolás Maduro, declared a national health emergency in response to the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, and appealed for the US to lift the economic sanctions against the country for reasons of public health.... Read More

* Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), had held a phone conversation with Ecuador’s President Lenín Moreno in which she offer the organisation’s continued support in the face of the country’s economic struggles, exacerbated by the recent collapse in international oil prices and the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.... Read More

* Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras has reduced the price of fuel in its refineries, with a 9.5% decrease in the price of gasoline and a 6.5% drop in the price of diesel, effective as of today (13 March).... Read More

On 12 March Cuba’s public health ministry (Minsap) reported the first case of a local resident that had become infected with coronavirus (Covid-19).... Read More

* After a ‘virtual meeting’ of the Central American integration system (Sica), the governments of Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, the Dominican Republic (DR), and Belize have issued a joint statement requesting that the Central American bank for economic integration (BCIE) work to “streamline” the distribution of emergency funds needed to address the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.... Read More

On 12 March Mexico’s finance minister, Arturo Herrera, sought to downplay the impact of the coronavirus (Covid-19) crisis on the Mexican peso, which fell to its lowest level since January 2017.... Read More

* Mexico’s state-owned oil firm, Pemex, has announced that it has received the first payment from its oil price hedging programme.... Read More

On 12 March the United Nations (UN) denounced the continued violations of protesters’ human rights by Chile’s security forces, stressing that President Sebastián Piñera’s government has almost entirely ignored the organisation’s recommendations following its review in December 2019.... Read More

* International credit ratings agency Fitch Ratings has maintained Chile’s Long-Term Foreign Currency Issue Default Rating (IDR) at ‘A’ but has revised its outlook on the rating from ‘stable’ to ‘negative’.... Read More