US agricultural giant Monsanto Tuesday posted a large increase in quarterly earnings on strong results in corn seed sales in the US and Latin America and better sales of pesticides. The St Louis-based corporation said net income for the first quarter was 339 million dollars, up from 126 million a year earlier.
The head of the World Animal Health Organization (OIE) called on countries that are banning Brazilian beef imports, following a case of mad cow disease last month, to lift restrictions as soon as possible, saying they were not justified.
Government expenditure in Chile expanded an estimated 5% last year while the economy grew 5.5%, making it the second consecutive year in which the economy outperforms outlays.
The Uruguayan government has set its sights on becoming one of the world's leading wind power producers as part of plans to produce 90% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2015, although much of the plan is still on the drawing board.
Argentina’s worldwide court battles against the hedge funds which did not accept the restructuring of its defaulted debt and are after the country’s assets, has gained another ally, the president of the World Economic Forum, (WEF) Klaus Schwab.
A number of senior figures at the Federal Reserve want the US central bank to stop or slow down its bond-buying program well before the end of 2013. December minutes of its interest rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) showed that several of its twelve members made the call.
Only four years ago 100.000 South Koreans lined the streets of Seoul to protest the return of US beef to Korea. Consumer confidence in US beef was at an all-time low to the extent that media outlets would not even accept paid ads promoting the products for fear of getting pulled into the protest backlash – instead joining the outrage by declaring US beef to be unsafe from BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) or ‘mad cow’.
New Zealand farm workers are doing better than their counterparts in other industries when it comes to wage rises. A Rabobank-Federated Farmers survey has shown farm workers recorded an overall average salary rise of 4.9% in the year to October, 2010.
Consumer prices in Uruguay ended the year at 7.48% after recording the lowest December percentage in forty years: a negative 0.73%. However analysts and consultants anticipate that inflation in the first quarter of 2013 will remain above an annualized 8%.
Argentina is among the world’s countries which experienced the highest inflation in the last five years based on average data from the country’s private consultants and the IMF. The double digit inflation was estimated at 21.3%, an approximate average for the 2008/2012 period, and compiled by IERAL an Argentine business think-tank.