Mercosur plans to begin negotiations with associate members Bolivia and Ecuador to make them full members, said Brazilian Foreign Affairs minister Antonio Patriota during Wednesday’s presidential summit in Paraguay.
Greece's parliament approved early Wednesday deeply unpopular austerity measures despite worsening violence, in a vote vital toward securing international funds and preventing the Euro zone's first sovereign default.
Argentina Economy Minister Amado Boudou said that the idea of appealing to an only shared currency by Mercosur members generates ‘doubts’ given the European experience, and feels more inclined ‘to stimulate trade with local currencies”, so that each member country can take advantage of monetary policy macroeconomic instruments.
Mercosur Ministers of Industry meeting in Paraguay, ahead of the presidential summit, discussed on Tuesday different mechanisms to weaken the flood of ‘cheap’ manufactured goods from Southeast Asia.
Mercosur structural convergence fund, Focem, which was created in 2005, has distributed 1.1 billion US dollars among its full members for the implementation of 37 projects basically to improve roads for inter-region and international trade, according to official figures released in Asunción.
The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund selected on Tuesday Christine Lagarde to serve as IMF Managing Director and Madame Chairman of the Executive Board for a five-year term starting on July 5, 2011.
House prices in some parts of Rio are up nearly 80% in the past year,” says Ronaldo Coelho Netto, an estate agent in Rio de Janeiro, looking up at a new development near the city centre.
The Mercosur summit will be an opportunity to solve asymmetry problems and social inequalities in the region, said Paraguay’ Foreign Affairs minister Jorge Lara Castro. The South American customs union is meeting this week in Asuncion for the first of two annual summits when the rotating chair will be passed on to Uruguay.
French banks have agreed to roll over holdings of Greek debt for 30 years, President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Monday, as the Greek government tries to persuade backbench rebels to back a crucial austerity plan to avert bankruptcy.
Dutch and British health officials advised people to avoid raw sprouts and seeds after scientists linked an outbreak of E. coli in France to a highly toxic one in Germany that has killed 47 people.