Economy

• Wednesday, October 26th 2011 - 13:42 UTC

  Fitch ratifies Brazil’s credit rating and medium term growth prospects

  

  Fitch Ratings said it had decided to maintain Brazil's BBB investment grade credit rating and predicted the outlook for the Latin America’s largest economy would remain stable.

• Wednesday, October 26th 2011 - 05:10 UTC

  Leiv Eirksson oil rig leaves for the Falklands from Greenland next month

  

  When the Leiv Eriksson, a rig built to hunt for oil beneath 10,000 feet of water in the world’s roughest seas, finishes drilling a well off Greenland’s west coast next month, it will sail for its next job -- a prospect 9,000 miles away, south of the Falkland Islands.

• Wednesday, October 26th 2011 - 03:13 UTC

  Brazil’s total federal debt stands at just over a trillion dollars, said the Treasury

  

  Brazil's total federal debt rose in September as the Treasury issued new debt at home and abroad, the government reported this week. The country's federal debt load increased 2.3% in the month to Reais 1.809 trillion (1.02 trillion dollars), from Reais 1.768 trillion in August, the Treasury said in a statement.

• Wednesday, October 26th 2011 - 03:04 UTC

  Brazil asks WTO to study “currency ‘misalignments” and global trade

  

  Brazilian government has proposed further study at the World Trade Organization on the effects that exchange rate fluctuations have on international trade, the foreign ministry said this week.

• Wednesday, October 26th 2011 - 02:45 UTC

  Euro zone bailout summit outcome in doubt; Italian government on the brink

  

  Italy's cabinet failed on Tuesday to agree on pension reforms as the country seeks to re-launch its economy and tackle its debt. Meanwhile, financial markets nervously await the outcome of Wednesday's second Euro zone summit.

• Wednesday, October 26th 2011 - 02:32 UTC

  Argentine industry ratifies support for CFK policies, but demands more competitiveness

  

  Over 80% of the Argentine electorate ratified on Sunday the current economic course, ‘which we must all support’ said the president of the powerful Argentine Industrial Union, Jose Ignacio de Mendiguren, who nevertheless called for a greater effort in “systemic competitiveness”.

• Wednesday, October 26th 2011 - 02:27 UTC

  Marfrig plans massive restructure to reduce costs and trim debt

  

  Brazilian meat processor Marfrig will restructure multiple segments of the company between now and December in an effort to reduce costs and trim away at its current debt of BRL10.3 billion (5.8 billion dollars), the company's president said this week in an interview with Valor Economico newspaper, partly reproduced by Meat trade news Daily.

• Tuesday, October 25th 2011 - 21:32 UTC

  FDI in Latam expands 41% in 2011 first half; strong support from ‘trans-Latins’

  

  In spite of global financial volatility during the first half of 2011, foreign direct investment (FDI) in Latin America and the Caribbean continued to grow maintaining the 2010 trend, according to a Tuesday release from the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, ECLAC, in Santiago de Chile.

• Tuesday, October 25th 2011 - 20:45 UTC

  The Argentine economy is “a time-bomb ticking” warns economist

  

  A ‘time bomb ticking’ is how economist Carlos Melconian described the current economic situation in Argentina in spite of all the production and consumption ‘records’. Melconian argues that Argentina is travelling through an ‘anaesthetic path’ which overshadows reality.

• Tuesday, October 25th 2011 - 19:45 UTC

  Crises in the US and Spain have Uruguayans returning in growing numbers

  

  Uruguayan expatriates are returning at an average of 350 per month which is three times the 2010 rate, but his only refers to those that have formally requested advice and assistance from the country’s Foreign Affairs ‘Return and Welcome Office’.