Argentina's economy grew at an annual rate of 5.2% in February according to the country’s stats office Indec monthly economic activity report Emae, reflecting good performances in construction and manufacturing. But prospects for the industrial sector could have some surprises.
The Emae indicator rose 0.3% in seasonally adjusted terms from January, Indec added.
In an article posted on the Fitch Wire credit market commentary page the rating agency slammed Argentina for its government’s decision to seize a majority stake in YPF from Spain’s Repsol as announced by President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner on Monday.
Vice president Danilo Astori currently on a business trip to Spain described Uruguay as an “attractive and safe” country to invest given its macroeconomic solidness, strength of its institutions and stimuli for investors, both domestic and from overseas.
Major emerging powers stood ready on Friday to pledge money to bolster the International Monetary Fund's crisis-fighting war chest, though Brazil was holding out for promises that their voting power at the global lender would increase.
Uruguay and Brazil agreed this week to jointly set up a 100MW wind farm in Uruguayan territory demanding an investment of 200 million dollars and which should become operational by 2013.
Freight truckers and customs’ brokers’ staff paralyzed the Buenos Aires port five terminals for a second day running to protest restrictions on import trade recently implemented, which has caused a collapse in port activities and thus jobs.
Argentine President Cristina Fernández minimized Spain’s decision to reduce the bio-diesel imports as a retaliation over the expropriation of YPF and called for “calm” after assuring that Argentina “is in condition to absorb” that production in the domestic market.
Brazilian Finance minister Guido Mantega said on Friday that IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde makes a mistake in recommending emerging countries not to intervene in the money exchange markets to counter the strong devaluation of currencies from the rich countries.
A new strain of Foot and Mouth Disease, known as SAT2, has broken out in Egypt and is threatening to spread to other areas of northern Africa and the Middle East.
The US government considers Argentine is obliged to submit its economic statistics to be validated by the IMF, and Washington will support all efforts from the multilateral organization so that the objective can be achieved.