Bolivian President Evo Morales announced on Tuesday the expropriation of Spain’s Red Eléctrica Española (REE) shares at a power transmission company in Bolivia and ordered the Army to take over the firm's headquarters.
Spain's sickly economy faces a crisis of huge proportions said Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo as unemployment hit its highest level in two decades and Standard and Poor's weighed in with a two-notch downgrade of the government's debt.
Colombia is available to mediate between Spain and Argentina to find a solution to the dispute over the seizure of YPF from Repsol, said Colombian Vice-president Angelino Garzón.
Spain’s main oil corporation Repsol warned it could take legal action against companies that invest in YPF after Argentina seized control of the Spanish company's energy unit last week.
Spain's jobs-scarce economy plunged back into recession in the first quarter of 2012 as employment slumped even further, the Bank of Spain said on Monday. Barely two years after emerging from the last downturn Spain slid into recession again with two consecutive quarters of economic contraction the central bank said in a report.
Vice president Danilo Astori currently on a business trip to Spain described Uruguay as an “attractive and safe” country to invest given its macroeconomic solidness, strength of its institutions and stimuli for investors, both domestic and from overseas.
Argentine President Cristina Fernández minimized Spain’s decision to reduce the bio-diesel imports as a retaliation over the expropriation of YPF and called for “calm” after assuring that Argentina “is in condition to absorb” that production in the domestic market.
The government of President Cristina Fernandez is “not concerned” about the escalade of international criticism following the announced nationalization of the oil company YPF, and rules “thinking in Argentina not in Spain or the US”, said two cabinet members.
Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos welcomed Spanish corporations and guaranteed his visiting Spanish peer Mariano Rajoy that in Colombia there will be no surprises because the country follows the rules of the game: “President Rajoy: here we don’t expropriate”.
Spain will discuss a joint response with the United States to Argentina‘s forced nationalization of the YPF oil company, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo said on Thursday.