Economy

• Saturday, April 21st 2012 - 07:31 UTC

  Astori tells Spanish businesses “Uruguay, an attractive and safe” country for investors

  

  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.

• Saturday, April 21st 2012 - 07:07 UTC

  Emerging powers committed to IMF but insist on less European predominance

  

  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.

• Saturday, April 21st 2012 - 06:57 UTC

  Uruguay and Brazil agree to jointly develop and expand wind power

  

  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.

• Saturday, April 21st 2012 - 05:19 UTC

  Argentine import restrictions trigger protests from port of Buenos Aires workers

  

  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.

• Saturday, April 21st 2012 - 04:03 UTC

  Argentina minimizes impact of Spain’s first retaliatory measures

  

  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.

• Saturday, April 21st 2012 - 03:51 UTC

  Brazil will continue to intervene in support of industry and depressing its currency

  

  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.

• Friday, April 20th 2012 - 19:20 UTC

  New FMD strain in Egypt; 100.000 cattle infected, no vaccine for SAT2

  

  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.

• Friday, April 20th 2012 - 04:44 UTC

  US fully supports IMF in demanding Argentina submits its stats to IMF for review

  

  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.

• Thursday, April 19th 2012 - 19:38 UTC

  World Bank and France criticize Argentina’s “mistake” and international law breach

  

  Argentina's move to nationalize local oil company YPF, controlled by Spain's Repsol, was strongly criticized by the World Bank president Robert Zoellick and French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé.

• Thursday, April 19th 2012 - 04:59 UTC

  Brazil lowers basic rate to 9%, sixth straight reduction and more could come

  

  Brazil lowered its benchmark interest rate to a near-historic low of 9% on Wednesday, as expected, but the central bank surprised with hints that more cuts may follow to revive Latin America's largest economy.