LatinNews Daily - 26 February 2021

On 25 February campaigning ended ahead of El Salvador’s 28 February legislative and municipal elections.... Read More

On 25 February the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the United Nations (UN), Michelle Bachelet, presented an annual report on Colombia to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, detailing a sharp increase in massacres and killings of human rights defenders in 2020 on the previous year.... Read More

* Peru’s institute of research and development of foreign trade at the Lima chamber of commerce (Idexcam) has released preliminary figures showing that Peru’s exports totalled US$3.22bn in January, a 13.17% decrease on the value of exports in January 2020.... Read More

On 25 February Rui Costa, the governor of Bahia state in Brazil’s north-east, warned that “healthcare will collapse and Brazil will be plunged into chaos in two weeks” because of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.... Read More

* Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has said that a government handout to help the country’s most vulnerable through the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, known as the emergency basic income, will be reinstated from March.... Read More

* Panama’s trade & industry ministry (MICI) has announced that a free trade agreement (FTA) with South Korea will take effect on 1 March.... Read More

On 25 February President Andrés Manuel López Obrador called for an investigation into the Auditoría Superior de la Federacíon (ASF), Mexico’s federal audit office, over its audit report in which it warned of spending irregularities by the federal government.... Read More

* Mexico’s central bank (Banxico) has released the minutes of a meeting of its board of directors, which warns of further uncertainty and risks to economic activity due mainly to the evolution of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.... Read More

On 25 February, the spoils – worth US$6.7m – of drug hauls carried out the previous day in the Alto Paraguay and Boquerón departments in Paraguay’s western Chaco region were transported to the headquarters of the police’s special operations forces (FOPE) in the capital, Asunción.... Read More

*Argentina’s central bank (BCRA) has issued new rules on access to foreign currency by local private firms seeking to repay their foreign currency-denominated debt.... Read More