BRAZIL | Biodiesel sector forecasts mass investment. The Brazilian union of biodiesel and biokerosene (Ubrabio) and the association of Brazilian biodiesel producers (Aprobio) have said that they expect the biodiesel industry in the country to receive R$28bn (US$14bn) in investments by 2020. At an industry conference in São Paulo, Ubrabio and Aprobio, the biodiesel industry’s main organisations, said that they foresaw a “vigorous” future growth in the sector that will require multi-million dollar investments in order to meet the sector’s needs. The organisations explained that currently the Brazilian government is in the process of defining the regulatory framework for these…
President Sebastián Piñera is making a steady but sure comeback in national opinion polls. Piñera enjoys an approval rating of 36% in the latest poll conducted by Adimark, up 10 percentage points in three months, as a series of positive data has been released, including impressive GDP figures, falling poverty, low unemployment and inflation, and the successful approval of an anti-discrimination law long mired in congress. Piñera has looked perplexed for much of the last 18 months as his government’s economic successes have paradoxically seen his popularity plummet. Much of this was discontentment with the whole political system, however, and…
One of the region’s standout examples of cross-party political cooperation is unravelling. Tension between the government of President José Mujica and the right-wing opposition Partido Colorado (PC; Colorados), exacerbated by Paraguay’s suspension from the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) and Venezuela’s back-door admittance to the bloc, prompted members of the PC to resign en masse this week from management positions in state companies, autonomous entities, decentralised services and other state institutions they were invited to take after Mujica came to power in 2010. Mujica made a concerted effort to reach out to the opposition after taking office by offering management positions…
President Cristina Fernández this week decreed the takeover for a 60-day period of Compañía de Valores Sudamericana SA (CVS), the only company (or institution) able to print the Argentine peso. Officially, the decision was taken so that the state could regain sovereignty over the printing of money; the opposition, however, argues that the takeover is part of a strategy intended to remove Vice-President Amado Boudou and the head of the tax agency (Afip), Ricardo Echegaray, from the eye of a corruption storm relating to the 2011 purchase of the company (better known for its previous name, Ciccone Calcográfica), which had…
President Dilma Rousseff is entreating her cabinet ministers not to be distracted by one of Brazil’s most sensational political corruption trials, currently unfolding in the supreme court and broadcast on television. Rousseff is concerned that the infamous mensalão corruption and bribery scandal could delay the approval of items on her agenda. But, even if her ministers manage to avoid the saturation coverage of the trial, they will need to work incredibly hard to produce anything that will divert attention from the trial which has its own section in the press just like the Olympics. The trial, which began on 2…