MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Latam markets plunge and growth forecasts downgraded

Latinamerican markets finished sharply lower on Tuesday under pressure from the slide on Wall Street, falling commodity prices and uncertainty about the future. Growth forecasts have also been downgraded.

Brazil's Bovespa fell 4.7% to 40,139.85, for the fourth time in a row. It was the first close under the 41,000-points level since May 2006. Mexico's IPC declined 4% to 20,884.74 for its first finish under 21,000 since September 2006. It has closed lower for fourth straight sessions. Argentina's Merval fell 2.7% to 1,384.60, the lowest since July 2005 having accumulated losses of 8.47% in two days. Chile's IPSA tumbled 4.3% to 2, 345.22, while the US dollar kept approaching the 600 Pesos benchmark. The Brazilian Real remained under pressure with the US dollar gaining as much as 5.7%, pushing it down to its lowest level in two years. The dollar against gained against the Mexican Peso by 4%. On Wall Street, the Dow industrials (DJI) crumbled 508 points to 9,447.11 after investors turned its focus from the Federal Reserve's entrance into the commercial paper to ease frozen credit markets, to minutes from the central bank's meeting in September that showed that rate policymakers set aside rate cuts. Bernanke said Tuesday that commodity prices are likely to move even lower because of the global economic slowdown Given the dependence of the region on commodity exports experts are downgrading economic forecasts for a number of Latam economies. Brazil is expected to expand 3% instead of 3.5% just a couple of weeks ago. Mexico's outlook was cut to 1.7% from 3.2%; Argentina to 2.5% from its previous forecast of 4.4%; and Chile to 3.2% from 4.2%.