
Chile is planning a 2013 budget with a tendency growth of 5% and an average long term basic copper price of 3.06 dollars the pound revealed finance minister Felipe Larraín together with Rosanna Costa, head of the Budget Office during a presentation before Congress.

The Organization of American States (OAS) agreed on Wednesday to dispatch of a mission to Paraguay to accompany and observe the electoral process in the country that will conclude with the general elections of April 21, 2013.

“We must prepare for war to live in peace” said Paraguay’s Defence minister Maria Liz Garcia in reference to the new geopolitical situation following the suspension of Paraguay as a member of Mercosur and Unasur.

The Atlanta based Carter Centre said this week that it declined an invitation from Venezuela's National Electoral Council to have a team at the country's Oct. 7 presidential election. The Centre said it received the invitation too late ”to evaluate it and organize the necessary experts and financing”.

Some 130 billion dollars will be invested in Venezuela's Orinoco Oil Belt between 2013 and 2019 to boost national production from 3 million barrels per day to 6 million bpd, President Hugo Chavez announced on Tuesday evening.

Venezuela, the latest entry as full member of Mercosur has the cheapest petrol price in the world, 8 pennies per liter, (1 £ trading at 1.59 dollars on 22 August) according to the latest report from UK website, “This is money”, based on a research from Evans Halshaw.

Less than a year ago an Ecuadorean judge denied a request to extradite Aliaksandr Barankov to Belarus, the former Soviet bloc nation whose president has been nicknamed Europe's last dictator, reports the US and European media.

The gap is widening between the rich and poor in much of Latin America which is the world’s most economically unequal and its most urbanized region, the UN said Tuesday. The richest 20% of the population now earn on average nearly 20 times more than the 20% poorest, a study by the UN Human Settlements Program (UN-HABITAT) found.

The Argentine Foreign Ministry on Tuesday hit back at the United States amid various trade barrier complaints and allegations of illegality saying that it would report the country for violating the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) rules for stopping imports of Argentine meat and citrus fruits to the US.

The Peruvian government announced that it will be sending Congress a bill that punishes the negation of the terrorist violence suffered by the country during the last decades of the last century. The bill against “negationism” is in ‘support of democracy and a unified front against terrorism’ which is still active in some parts of the country in alliance with the drug lords.