LatinNews Daily - 19 January 2022

On 18 January Íngrid Betancourt, a former senator and long-time hostage of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) guerrilla group, announced that she will compete for the nomination of the centrist Coalición Centro Esperanza (CCE) ahead of Colombia’s May presidential election.... Read More

* Ecuador’s President Guillermo Lasso has signed a decree to eliminate the capital outflow tax (ISD) for the import of hydrocarbons, biofuels, and natural gas.... Read More

On 18 January, workers from Brazil’s public sector staged a sparsely attended protest in the capital Brasília to challenge budget cuts and demand salary readjustments. ... Read More

* The Companhia Nacional de Abastecimento (Conab), the logistics arm of Brazil’s agriculture ministry, has announced that it expects Brazil’s coffee producers to collect 55.7m sacks of coffee this year (one sack = 60kg), a 16.8% increase on last year’s harvest - this would make the 2022 coffee harvest the third largest on record, after 2018 and 2020.... Read More

On 18 January Guatemala’s attorney general’s office (AG) announced a new request to strip Erika Aifán, a judge in the high-risk criminal court, of her immunity from prosecution for alleged abuse of authority, dereliction of duty and prevarication.... Read More

* Costa Rica’s tourism institute (ICT), a government body, has released new figures which show that tourist arrivals to the country totalled 1.35m in 2021 of which 94% were via air.... Read More

On 18 January, Mexico’s national electoral institute (INE) confirmed it had collected and validated the signatures needed to trigger the presidential recall referendum, due to take place on 10 April.... Read More

* Mexico’s national statistics institute (Inegi) has released is latest preliminary indicator of economic activity (IOAE), which estimates that productive activity fell by 0.2% in December 2021 compared to the same month in 2020, after eight consecutive months of year-on-year increases.... Read More

On 18 January, in a bid to secure US support for Argentina’s negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero met with the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington; later the same day Cafiero also met the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.... Read More

* Argentina’s President Alberto Fernández has announced an initiative to create a “renewable energy cluster” to be developed by public and private companies in various provinces.... Read More