The Army is once again the center of a controversy between the secularists and conservatives, even though our base case scenario is another temporary cease-fire. In bad case scenarios,

President Garcia annual address on Independence Day was mainly a long list of his government achievements with few announcements or proposals. Also, the traditional midyear cabinet ...

We are cautiously optimistic about the second half of the year. We see moderating forces that will compensate the current dynamism of retail, industry and construction. We are now ...

On July 28, the International Monetary Fund finally approved new stand-by program with Ukraine. The decision was quite predictable since promptly after staff-level agreement on July ...

In June, both current and financial accounts remained positive. Current account balance equaled to $195 million. Major inflow was observed in services. In particular, revenues from ...

GDP growth slowed in H1, and fell to 10.3% in Q2 from 11.9% in Q1. It’s likely that the government-encouraged pullback in lending is a significant factor behind the slowing trend. ...

It is hard to imagine an external environment more favorable for Argentina. First, the global recovery is being driven by emerging economies with growing commodity demand. This keeps ...

The Central Bank released its July Inflation Report today. There was no surprise in the Report, in which both inflation forecast (for end-2010) and the rate outlook (through 2011) ...

Mixed Reviews. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III made his first state-of-the-nation address (SONA) yesterday as the Philippines’ brand new president. Delivered in the native language, ...

In its Inflation Report for June, the Central Bank led the market to expect two consecutive 75-basis-point increases in the SELIC rate, the first at the July COPOM meeting and the ...

A fiscal law proposed by the outgoing government would limit future administrations’ spending flexibility, by requiring some oil and mining windfalls to be saved for leaner times, ...

Facing the World. Colombia is taking all necessary steps to force Chávez to either act against guerrillas and drug traffickers or face unwanted consequences....

The Central Bank published disappointing output growth estimates for Q1 2010, of 0.33% QoQ and 0.6 YoY. That put Ecuador at the tail end of South American countries, ahead only of ...

Plagued by flaws, Sitme will prove fleeting, we project. But it will probably survive at least till the September 26 parliamentary elections. This is apt, given that the program seems ...

The Reserve Bank’s decision to keep the repurchase interest rate unchanged at 6.5% (Graph 1) is in line with our expectation. Although this decision might be met with disappointment ...

This month we present our 2010-2011 economic outlook for Costa Rica. We’ll make similar presentations for Guatemala in August, and El Salvador in September. The outlook for growth ...

In June, retail trade continued growing even more rapidly – it increased by 2.5% in year terms and 4% in monthly terms after only 1.1% and 1.7%, respectively, a month ago. Deflation ...

During June, industry growth dynamics continued to decelerate. Annual growth rate decreased from 12.7% in May to only 8.9% in June. Worsening world metals market was the key reason ...

During the last three decades the Dominican economy has shown high GDP growth rates, as well as a significant resilience capacity after each economic crisis. DR’s economy has even ...

As expected, the Monetary Policy Committee left the policy rate (one-week repo rate) unchanged today at 7%, simple. The language in the statement remains dovish, in line with our ...

More of Calderon’s Inner Circle. Yesterday evening, President Calderon announced changes in his cabinet; specifically, the minister of the Interior, Fernando Gomez Mont and the Head ...

Upon signing the Kharkov agreements that approved a new spending plan, President Viktor Yanukovich’s team promptly began developing strategic plans for fundamental economic reform....

Finally the market is agreeing with what we have been saying for a long time about the speed of the monetary policy normalization process. They are expecting that the Central Bank ...

Prices on the consumers market continued the downward trend. In June CPI decreased by 0.4% MoM. Again, the deflating foodstuff prices remained the main contributor to this dynamics....

For the second quarter of 2010, the Mexican economy is still at risk. However, despite, the grave fiscal imbalances accumulated by a number of European countries, financial markets ...