Mexico, Russia and Thailand added gold now valued at about 6 billion US dollars to their reserves in the first quarter of 2011 as metal prices advanced to a record, the dollar weakened and US Treasuries lost investors money.
President Rafael Correa won Ecuador's vote on judicial and media reforms, but by a smaller margin than forecast, near-final results showed on Wednesday evening.
By Andres Velasco, Former Finance Minister of Chile.
The Inter-American Development Bank declared last July that this would be “Latin America’s Decade.” A couple of months later, The Economist endorsed that idea, which has since been repeated by countless apologists and experts.
Lawmakers from the European Union and Latin America meeting in Uruguay approved two resolutions on the lack of freedoms in Cuba and on the coming electoral process in Venezuela.
Uruguay’s sound economic and stable political environment were underlined by the country’s Deputy Minister for Public Works and Transport during a high level business forum to attract investors to Latin American which was held in the capital of South Korea, Seoul.
The Union of South American Nations, Unasur, defence ministers sponsored in Peru a declaration confirming the region as a “peace zone” and agreed to continue advancing in developing a “common methodology” to compare defence expenditure among member countries.
The following piece by Jude Webber writing for the Financial Times explains the different approach by the two neighboring countries to the windfall earnings of the commodities boom.
Almost 81 million children under 18 suffer from poverty in Latin America which is equivalent to 45% of that age group according to a study by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
Whatever happens next June 5 when the Peruvian presidential run-off between Ollanta Humala and Keiko Fujimori, none of them will have a clear support in the 130 seats Congress which will force alliances as has been the recent legislative history of the Andean country.
Cuba has given all small businesses the authority to hire (and fire) labour and will loosen other regulations governing private enterprise as part of the broader measures to reform the island’s economy and boost production, the government said in a statement.