YPF SA shares fell the most in 20 months after newspaper Pagina/12 said Argentine officials discussed a takeover of the country’s biggest oil producer, following a controversy with the oil industry over alleged fuel-price fixing and lack of investment which doubled the country’s fuel imports bill to 9.4 billion dollars in 2011.
Argentine industrial production is expected to expand 6% to 7% this year, Industry Minister Debora Giorgi said in a statement Sunday. That would put industrial growth inline with 2011, when it rose 6.5%, according to the national statistics agency, Indec.
In Argentina there are an estimated 60 to 70 billion dollars “outside the financial system” according to the head of the Financial Information Unit, FIU, which is the country’s office in charge of preventing and combating money laundering.
Argentina is “a good problem” for Brazil, said President Dilma Rousseff’s Foreign policy advisor Marco Aurelio Garcia ahead of another trade dispute when Argentina begins applying a new imports’ scheme that has been equally criticized by local and Brazilian manufacturers.
Wood chip exports from Latin America are on track to reach a record high of almost eight million tons in 2011, reports the Wood Resource Quarterly. This would be an increase of 7% from last year and of almost 60% higher than in 2006.
Spain’s unemployment total has passed the five million mark, with the jobless rate shooting up from 21.5% to 22.8%, which represents something like one out of four workers don’t have a job.
Uruguay's President José Mujica said that Mercosur bloc is stalled and has no natural institutional operation to push other countries to express their willingness to enter it plus lacking the fluidity of a natural relationship.
Argentine organized labour, CGT, sent over the week end strong messages to the government of President Cristina Fernandez a day after their leader Hugo Moyano in a comeback speech called government official pre-programmed ‘teacher’s pets” and anticipated a complicated round of salary negotiation with many ‘possible conflicts’.
Chancellor Angela Merkel tried to deflect growing international pressure on Germany to agree an increase in the Euro zone's bailout funds by saying talks were still continuing.
Brazil’s central government exceeded its budget target for 2011 by posting a primary surplus (excluding interest payments) of 93.5 billion Reais (53.7 billion dollars) for the year.