
The consumers' prices index, CPI in Uruguay dropped 0.23% in October pushed down by the significant decrease in urban transport rates and health costs, both government managed prices.

Uruguay's main international sea resort Punta del Este inaugurated on Tuesday the 2007/08 cruise season with the arrival of Grand Voyager and 900 tourists. Local operators and officials are encouraged by what they consider promises to be an exceptional cruise season.

Uruguayan president Tabare Vazquez said that the Botnia pulp mill will be authorized to begin production next week, no matter what happens in the coming Ibero-American summit in Chile. The Finnish built plant is at the heart of an acrimonious dispute between Uruguay and Argentina.

Uruguay has ordered the vaccination of 90.000 livestock cattle in the border area with Brazil following an outbreak of bat-transmitted paralytic rabies that killed thirty head of cattle. Sanitary authorities have asked farmers and residents to help locate bat caves on both sides of the open frontier.

Uruguay's meat exports in the first nine months of this year totaled 368.662 tons equivalent to 816 million US dollars, compared to 429.376 tons and 919 million US dollars in the same period a year ago, according to the latest release from the country's National Meat Institute of Uruguay (INAC).
At the request of Spain Uruguay at last moment postponed the effective start-up of a 1.2 billion US dollars Finnish built pulp mill which has been at the heart of an acrimonious two-year controversy with neighboring Argentina.

The first official order for the so-called 100 US dollars laptop has been placed by the government of Uruguay which is buying 100,000 of the machines for schoolchildren aged six to 12.

An Argentine corporation has joined a group of European and Japanese companies that are intent in turning Uruguay into a leading partner in the pulp and paper industry. Celulosa Argentina announced Wednesday it has plans to invest a billion US dollars to produce a million tons of pulp annually.

Portuguese pulp and paper maker Portucel will decide before the end of the year whether it will build a plant in Uruguay, government representatives announced. This would become the fourth pulp mill to be established in Uruguay.

Uruguay announced Friday that the Botnia-Orion pulp mill, which has been at the heart of an ongoing bitter controversy with Argentina, is set to begin production in mid November conditioned to the finishing of a bicycle lane and an alternative water intake for the plant.