Brazil & Southern Cone - April 2020

This April issue of the Regional Report: Brazil & Southern Cone goes to press as the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic has engulfed the whole region, monopolising the attention of governments as they seek to juggle a response to the public health emergency that the disease represents with the need to prop up domestic economies as they face a recession expected to be the region’s worst ever, according to the United Nations Economic Commission on Latin America & the Caribbean (Eclac).... Read More

As they buckle under the combined effects of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, the gathering global economic recession, and a slump in commodity prices, Latin American countries are all scrambling to launch countercyclical fiscal measures.... Read More

The coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic has raised the question of how the containment of the outbreak should be managed in prisons, ideal incubators for the disease.... Read More

Brazil has seen a sustained drop in homicides for two years running, since violent deaths hit a record high of close to 65,000 in 2017.... Read More

Abruptly falling energy demand, record low international oil and gas prices, and pandemic-related financial turbulence are all delivering a serious blow to Brazil’s hydrocarbons sector.... Read More

There is a long-standing narrative that Argentina will be saved from its economic travails by the development of the ‘Vaca Muerta’ (‘dead cow’) shale oil and gas fields in Patagonia.... Read More

Argentina’s President Alberto Fernández has been promising judicial reform since taking office on 10 December 2019.... Read More

URUGUAY| Government sets up ‘coronavirus fund’.... Read More