THE WEEK IN CORONAVIRUS The lives lost to Covid-19 crossed the 40,000 threshold on Tuesday, climbing from 39,512 to 40,431 between the end of last week and yesterday while the confirmed cases of contagion rose from 1,454,631 to 1,482,216 in the same period. Coronavirus debate tended to focus on the upcoming summer holidays ahead of … Read more
Punta Carrasco and Costa Salguero are 32 hectares of coastal grounds that run along the northeastern part of Buenos Aires City. During most of the 20th century the area was open to the public and the sight of thousands of citizens basking in the sun and bathing in the waters of the River Plate was … Read more
Nine months after recording its first coronavirus case, Uruguay is seeing an outbreak in what President Luis Lacalle Pou has called the “first wave,” threatening to undo the hard-fought gains throughout the pandemic. The government is taking a heavier-handed approach to beat back infections including tighter border restrictions and a bill sent to Congress seeking … Read more
Britain and the European Union signed a post-Brexit trade deal on Wednesday, setting their seal on a drawn-out divorce just hours before the United Kingdom brings its half-century European experiment to an end. EU chiefs Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel, the heads of the European Commission and European Council, smiled at a brief televised … Read more
Maize climbed to US$ 5 a bushel and soybeans rallied for a sixth day, driving both crops to fresh six-year highs, as farmer protests and dry weather in South America threaten to further tighten supplies. Grain markets surged in the past month on adverse weather and as some nations moved to restrict exports to ensure … Read more
A ban on maize exports in Argentina is fanning fear among farmers and traders that one of the world’s top food suppliers is returning to an era of brutal meddling in crop markets. The measure creates yet another driver for surging global grain futures, given Argentina is the third-largest shipper of maize, and stokes concern … Read more
Agricultural producers in Argentina began a three-day strike on Monday in rejection of the government’s move to suspend maize exports for the next two months. The so-called ‘paro agrario’ went ahead despite a last-minute intervention from the government, which lifted the block and replaced it with a daily sales cap on corn exports as the … Read more
Argentina’s peso, the world’s weakest currency for the past two years, has nowhere to go but down as the nation struggles to rein in runaway consumer price increases, according to the currency’s most accurate forecaster in 2019’s fourth quarter. “We see the peso at some point depreciating and catching up with a persistently high inflation … Read more
The Economy Ministry on Monday announced new measures to reduce the pressures on volatile currency markets and ward off devaluation, basically by bolstering the alternatives other than the official exchange rate to a surging “blue” parallel dollar. The main innovation overturns mid-September capital controls imposed by the Central Bank to cut the so-called “parking” interval … Read more
The past few weeks have been the best for the Alberto Fernández administration in quite some time, giving the embattled president and his Cabinet a little breathing room. They better not pat themselves on the back just yet though, as this relative calm is not destined to last. As usual in Argentina, the value of … Read more