The UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC)'s Preliminary Overview of regional economies is looking for real annual growth across the region to accelerate to 3.2% in 2014, up from 2.6% in 2013. However, in many countries, domestic demand will face headwinds. On 18 December 2013, the US Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) finally announced that it would begin tapering the large-scale asset purchase program that has been the key feature of recent monetary policy. In recent weeks, many indicators have pointed to accelerating economic growth in the US, as well as strengthening activity in Japan, the…

Anyone following Mexico’s business press and the comments of manufacturing managers and analysts in recent months, particularly in the industrialised north of the country, could be forgiven for getting a little confused. After a lifetime of over half a century the maquiladora sector – in-bond assembly plants largely focused on the US market – is reported to be either on the verge of death, or at the dawn of a new golden age. Surely both things can’t be true at the same time? The maquiladoras – assembly plants near the border with the US – were introduced in the 1960s.…

In late November an outline deal was reached to resolve one of Latin America’s biggest and bitterest commercial disputes: the battle over compensation after the Argentine government expropriated a 51% shareholding in the country’s main oil company Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF), previously controlled by the Spanish oil major Repsol. A key broker in the deal was Mexico’s state-owned Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), itself an important shareholder in Repsol. So what are these three companies now trying to achieve? A lot can happen in both politics and the oil industry in 19 months, and in this case, a lot has. Nineteen months…

The period running between roughly mid-November and mid-December this year was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good time for Venezuelan retailers. In the run-up to municipal elections on 8 December (in which President Nicolás Maduro’s ruling Partido Unido Socialista de Venezuela [PSUV] won a majority of municipalities), the government launched what it described as an all-out war against economic sabotage, overpricing and speculation. Backed by newly-approved emergency decree powers, the president set about imposing mandatory price discounts. Here we look at how the new measures were brought in. The onslaught on the country’s hard-pressed retail businesses –…

On 10 December 2013, Fitch Ratings lifted its sovereign rating for Colombia by one notch to BBB, which is the second-lowest investment grade rating. Fitch has correctly identified that the economy will remain resilient through 2014 - virtually regardless of global developments. Meanwhile, official efforts to fight corruption and improve the efficiency of public services would probably serve to lift growth. In June this year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced a new two-year Flexible Credit Line (FCL) of US$5.84bn for the Colombian government. David Lipton, the First Deputy Managing Director and Acting Chairman of the IMF Executive Board, noted…

Chile's President-elect Michelle Bachelet will take office in March 2014 to strong expectations from students and labour unions that, as promised, her new centre-left government will meet their demands (for free education and more equitable wages, among other things). Falling copper prices and slowing economic growth mean that it could be difficult for the new administration to satisfy these demands. Meanwhile, it remains to be seen how Chile's corporate sector copes with an increased tax rate at a time that wage increases are not necessarily being matched by higher productivity. Along with the general election, industrial unrest has been a…