Blue Dollar The International Monetary Fund risks having to renegotiate its second multi-billion dollar loan in Latin America in as many years following Ecuador’s presidential election. The candidates who likely advanced to a runoff vote in the Andean country, Andrés Arauz and Yaku Pérez, have both criticised the tax increases and spending cuts required as part of … Read more
Argentina’s goal to reach an agreement with the International Monetary Fund on a new programme by May 2021 is an ambitious timeline, according to the the Fund’s Western Hemisphere Director Alejandro Werner. “I don’t see it as unviable, but clearly it’s an ambitious date,” Werner said Monday during a virtual IMF press briefing. “The Argentine authorities … Read more
THE WEEK IN CORONAVIRUS There were 1,915,362 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 47,775 deaths at press time yesterday as against 1,853,830 cases and 46,575 deaths the previous Friday. Last weekend Vice-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner received her Sputnik V jab in Avellaneda, not from any ordinary nurse or doctor but from no less than Buenos … Read more
The gilded Trump name may no longer sell New York real estate. But, 5,000 miles away, investors are raising millions in a bet that the former US president’s brand retains its international cachet. In South America, they’re resurrecting a project left for dead: a Trump tower in Punta del Este, the Uruguay resort city known … Read more
THE WEEK IN CORONAVIRUS There were 1,970,009 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 48,985 deaths at press time yesterday, as against 1,915,362 cases and 47,775 deaths the previous Friday. One death last weekend was not caused by Covid-19 but was a high-profile episode within the quarantine saga – Abigail Jiménez, 12, the terminal cancer patient who … Read more
In what amounts to rare praise for Argentina’s politics and economic policies, global anti-poverty charity Oxfam hailed the Alberto Fernández administration’s one-off capital levy on wealthy citizens this week, calling on other nations to follow suit. In reaction to the pandemic, countries should raise wealth taxes like Argentina, Oxfam told the Davos Economic Forum (held … Read more
Argentina’s aviation authorities have instructed carriers to dramatically reduce the number of flights to a number of countries to reduce the risk of Covid-19 contagion. The National Administration of Civil Aviation (ANAC) this week sent a bulletin to airlines instructing them to cut the amount of flights to Brazil, Mexico, the US and a handful European … Read more
Humanity’s unbridled growth in recent decades has come at a “devastating cost to nature” according a wide-ranging international review on the vital economic role played by our living planet. The 600-page rundown of scientific material commissioned by the British government highlighted the precarious state of biodiversity and warned that only a sea change in how … Read more
The coronavirus pandemic has triggered the steepest drop in Latin American foreign trade in 2020 since the global financial crisis more than a decade ago, a UN body said Friday. Exports from the region are estimated to have fallen 13 percent in value in 2020, and imports by 20 percent, the UN Economic Commission for Latin … Read more
No prophet is welcome in his own country, they say, and that would also seem to apply to architects. Tucumán’s César Pelli (1926-2019) completed the Petronas twin towers in Kuala Lumpur in 1998, the world’s highest building for the next six years at 452 metres and still the world’s tallest twin towers. A decade later … Read more