The World Bank's Doing business 2014 report is not very encouraging for Latin-America with Chile the best ranked in position 34 out of 189 economies surveyed, but the group of countries that make up the Pacific Alliance again figures well ahead of Mercosur.
Argentina has made public its first retaliation against Uruguay over the Botnia/UPM pulp mill controversy and has banned Argentine exports from being trucked to Montevideo for shipment overseas. The resolution was published Tuesday in the Official Gazette and invokes maritime transport agreements in the framework of Mercosur.
Argentina pledged to strengthen its relationship with the Caribbean Community (Caricom) saying that it was also looking to develop new areas of integration with the Caribbean under the paradigm of south-south cooperation, reports the Jamaica Observer from Georgetown Guyana.
Paraguay has named veteran diplomat Enrique Jara as new ambassador in Venezuela, giving a further step towards the full normalization of relations that had been interrupted since July 2012 when the two countries expelled their respective accredited staff.
Peru's Prime Minister Juan Jimenez said on Tuesday he is leaving President Ollanta Humala's government and that other cabinet changes will soon be announced by his successor - a local governor and former business manager.
China National Petroleum Corp., the country’s largest oil producer, is nearing an agreement to buy Petrobras assets in Peru for more than 2 billion dollars. The proposed deal may be announced as soon as next month, according to sources quoted by Bloomberg.
The US National Security Agency’s cyber spying on foreign heads of state from Angela Merkel to Dilma Rousseff is poised to produce its first high-profile corporate casualty: Google Inc.’s operations in Brazil.
Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff will inaugurate on Tuesday in Paraguay next to his peer Horacio Cartes a high voltage transmission line from the world's largest operational hydroelectric dam Itaipú to metropolitan Asuncion, capital of the landlocked country and which was financed with Mercosur funds.
Brazil’s state-controlled oil producer Petrobras said third-quarter profit slid 40%, missing analysts’ estimates, on higher fuel imports and refining losses. Net income dropped to 3.39 billion Reais (1.55bn dollars) from 5.66 billion Reais a year earlier, the company said on Friday in a regulatory statement.
Former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's political movement chose economist Oscar Ivan Zuluaga on Saturday as its candidate for presidential elections in May, a vote which represents Uribe's tough stance against leftist guerrillas.