BRAZIL | Agricultural production expected to bounce back. On 5 June Brazil’s national statistics institute, Ibge, revealed that it expects that the total 2012 harvest of grains, legumes and oilseeds will be 160.3m tonnes, a 0.1% increase on last year’s record harvest of 160.1m tonnes. At the beginning of the year some of Brazil’s most productive agricultural regions in the south of the country suffered the effects of a severe drought which translated into substantial crop losses; and there was concern that this would seriously hamper Brazil’s economic performance. Indeed according to Ibge, Brazil’s lowly 0.2% growth rate registered in…

It may not have been a teacher chastising a schoolboy, but it sounded like it. This week, in an attempt to increase confidence in the Argentine economy and dispel fears that the government-imposed currency controls are the step prior to a mass devaluation, President Cristina Fernández announced that she would be turning her US dollar fixed-term deposits into peso-denominated ones. In her latest declaration of assets, which was submitted in July 2011 but relates to 2010, Fernández declared savings totalling US$3.06m in greenbacks, which roughly constitutes 36% of her total savings. This week she also asked her ministers and her…

Any cabinet change in Uruguay causes commotion, such is the delicate balance between the myriad parties that make up the ruling Frente Amplio (FA) coalition, so when President José Mujica replaced arguably the most successful minister in his cabinet last week, it opened damaging divisions. The tourism and sports minister, Héctor Lescano, became only the third member of the cabinet to be replaced by President Mujica since he came to power in March 2010. His dismissal was unexpected because tourism has been positively booming in the seven years he has been in the position. Mujica justified the change on the…

The US and Brazil are once more at loggerheads over foreign policy. Mike Hammer, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, called for “more action” from Brazil to pressure Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad on 1 June. In a swift and firm riposte Brazil’s foreign minister Antonio Patriota insisted that Brazil’s commitment to supporting the plan of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan for settling the Syrian crisis was “perhaps greater than that of the US”. He added that Brazil not only supported the Annan plan but also a resolution by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) calling for Assad…