Vice-president Danilo Astori said he was surprised at the way events unfolded ending with the decision from the Royal Bank of Canada of leaving Uruguay, but also concerned about the international impact of such a move, triggered by a ‘disorderly’ raid in its offices.
Former minister and ex-presidential hopeful Roberto Lavagna warned that the Argentine economy is going through “the worst scenario possible” since the market has already adapted to the devaluation of the Peso, but the government of President Cristina Fernandez in its fantasy refuses to acknowledge it.
Newly-formed mining giant Glencore Xstrata has written down the value of Xstrata's assets by 7.7bn dollars and reported a drop in revenues. The firm, which was created in May, said the write-down reflected tougher conditions in the mining sector.
The Brazilian currency Real, which is the region’s reference, is undergoing one of its major depreciations against the US dollar in the last four years because of the poor performance of its economy and the tendency is to continue, at least in the short term, given the uncertainty about US monetary policy.
Uruguay has become one of the dearest countries in the region taking into account prices of goods and services according to a survey in eleven cities done by the Group of Newspapers from the Americas, (GDA) a network of the main dailies in the continent.
The Royal Bank of Canada, RBC, is abandoning Uruguay following a raid in its offices at Zonamerica ordered by a Uruguayan magistrate on request from Argentina during which computers, documents on clients and even cell phones from staff were seized by the intervening party which included on-watching Argentine treasury police.
Argentina's central bank approved on Thursday the use of 2.5 billion dollars to pay public debt through the rest of 2013, a move that will further diminish reserves already stretched by heavy state spending ahead of the October midterm election.
Argentina's Consumer Price Index (IPC) was up 0.9% in July, 5.7% in the first seven months of the year and 10.6% in the last twelve months, the official statistics bureau Indec reported on Thursday.
Brazil's economic activity grew at a slightly slower pace than expected in June despite strong industrial output, data showed on Thursday. The central bank's IBC-Br index climbed 1.13% in June from May in seasonally adjusted terms, up from a decline of 1.50% in the previous month.
In an extremely aggressive speech in the aftermath of primaries defeat, Argentine president Cristina Fernandez blasted the media for misinterpreting electoral results, charged against the Mayor of Tigre Sergio Massa who was the big winner on Sunday, pressed for full commitment from her allies and promised more of the same in support of the ‘socially inclusive model’.