MercoPress, en Español

Montevideo, May 20th 2024 - 03:34 UTC

Economy

  • Wednesday, April 3rd 2024 - 19:58 UTC

    Paraguay not unwilling to pay Waterway toll, FM says

    Article 8 of the Waterway Treaty allows countries to charge tolls under certain conditions, Ramírez recalled

    Paraguayan Foreign Ministry Rubén Ramírez Lescano told Congress Wednesday in Asunción that the government of President Santiago Peña was not against barges sailing through the Paraná Waterway paying toll provided there was a service in return.

  • Wednesday, April 3rd 2024 - 19:25 UTC

    Brazilian industry slides for second straight month

    February's results were influenced by a calendar effect, Macedo explained

    According to the Monthly Industrial Survey released Wednesday by Brazil's Rio de Janeiro-based Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), industrial production in South America's largest country fell 0.3% in February, which represented its second straight monthly decline after January's -1.5%, Agencia Brasil reported.

  • Monday, April 1st 2024 - 18:44 UTC

    Google to lay submarine cable between Chile and Australia

    The Humboldt cable will join other infrastructure projects, Google Cloud's Quigley said

    Tech giants Google plan to link Chile with Australia and French Polynesia through the Humboldt cable, which would become first direct submarine link between South America and Oceania, thus expanding the digital infrastructure of the South Pacific.

  • Monday, April 1st 2024 - 12:22 UTC

    Federal Reserve chairman Powell, “in no rush to begin cutting interest rates”

    Powell said, and even though the numbers showed less of a slowdown than last year, “you won't see us overreacting.”

    Despite an encouraging Personal Consumption Expenditure Index, PCE, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell repeated on Sunday that the U.S. central bank isn’t in any rush to cut interest rates as policymakers await more evidence that inflation is contained.

  • Monday, April 1st 2024 - 10:59 UTC

    Paraguay records highest economic growth in the region in 2023

    Increasing household consumption is driving prices upward, also pushing the guaraní down against the US dollar

    Paraguay's Central Bank (BCP) issued a report last week announcing that the country had recorded the highest regional growth in the last quarter of 2023, with a positive rate of 4.9%.

  • Friday, March 29th 2024 - 18:38 UTC

    Province of Buenos Aires' economy contracts under Libertarian policies

    The “macroeconomy cannot be stabilized if production is destroyed,” López stressed

    Pablo López, the Economy Minister of the Argentine Province of Buenos Aires, a territory larger in size and productivity than many independent countries worldwide, wrote on X that the “macroeconomy cannot be stabilized if production is destroyed.” López, of Argentina's main opposition front, made those remarks after announcing a 4% drop in economic activity in the first two months of the year, for which he blamed President Javier Milei's policies.

  • Friday, March 29th 2024 - 10:53 UTC

    FTA deal between EU and Mercosur needs to start from scratch, says Macron

    “Let’s put aside an agreement from 20 years ago and build a new” one, Macron insisted

    French President Emmanuel Macron told a business forum in São Paulo that the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the South American Common Market (Mercosur) and the European Union (EU) needed to be ”renegotiated from scratch,” Agencia Brasil reported.

  • Thursday, March 28th 2024 - 19:53 UTC

    Car sales plummet in Argentina

    The less expensive brand-new units sell for at least US$ 20,000, a price the market is not validating

    The business of selling cars in Argentina contracted 36.6% in the last 12 months as the South American country faces considerably high prices in US dollars coupled with rampant inflation and unemployment, it was reported in Buenos Aires.

  • Thursday, March 28th 2024 - 18:57 UTC

    Chile: Slight increase in unemployment reported

    The increase in the labor force was greater than the increase in the number of employed people, Chile's INE found

    Chile's National Statistics Institute (INE) released a report Thursday showing that unemployment in the mobile quarter from December 2023 to February 2024 reached 8.5%, an annual increase of 0.1%. In the Santiago Metropolitan Region (RM), it reached 9.3%, which represented a decrease of 0.4% in twelve months.

  • Thursday, March 28th 2024 - 11:31 UTC

    Uruguayan rural producers affected by stronger local currency

    “Supply and demand determine what the dollar is worth,” Central Bank President Labat has said

    Uruguay's rural producers underlined that the constant appreciation of the local peso against the US dollar was detrimental to their exporting activities and insisted that the appropriate exchange rate should be US$ 1 = UY$ 58 instead of UY$ 37.5, which represents a 3.9% drop so far this year.