Argentine Economy Minister and Vice-President elect Amado Boudou urged Latin American countries to increase the use of local currencies in regional trade instead of depending on other currency such as the dollar.
A large majority of banks in Latin America and the Caribbean consider small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) as a strategic part of their business and are upbeat about expanding their business to this sector in the next two years, according to the Latin American Banking Federation, Feleban.
The Secretary-General of the Ibero-American Secretariat Enrique Iglesias, warned Thursday that the EU crisis could reach as far as Asia and Latin America, and that preventive measures should be taken.
Chile, Argentina and Uruguay have the highest standards of living in Latin America according the latest report from the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI).
The Latin American block arrives this week at the G20 summit in Cannes with a consensus spearheaded by the strong political standing of Brazil in global affairs and with criticisms to the way in which the European Union and the US are managing their respective “crises”.
Spanish media criticized harshly the latest Ibero-American summit in Paraguay last Saturday arguing that the non attendance of 11 of 22 leaders of the region can only be described as a failure of Madrid’s diplomacy and disrespect for the Spanish representatives.
Six of the 14 most violent countries in the world are in Latin America revealed the second edition of the report “Armed Violence and Development” published Thursday in Geneva by the Secretariat from the Geneva Declaration on Violence and Development, a diplomatic initiative born in 2008.
Latin America’s economy is forecasted to grow between 3.5% and 4% this year, which is less than previous estimates before the current global financial crisis, said World Bank representative for the region, Pamela Cox.
Latin America is in a good financial situation, but the problems currently being suffered by the US and Europe poses a threat, according to the region’s banks federation, FELEBAN.
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.