Economy & Business - May-June 2012 (ISSN 1741-7430)

Uruguay is not armoured. Its economy is small and highly open, meaning that it rises and falls in line with external trends and is very vulnerable to negative exogenous shocks. Local policymakers fear that the sliding industrial activity figures are a precursor of worse to come. If policymakers do not act quickly, employment could begin to suffer and with it the domestic consumption boom that has shielded some local manufacturers from the worst of the global economic crisis.