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COUNTRY INSIGHTS

Brazil Presidential Election
BRAZIL POLITICS · Report · 21 Mar 2014

Desire for change challenges Dilma’s lead On Thursday evening, March 20, Ibope released a presidential voting intention poll. The poll, conducted on March 13-17, presented practically the same results as the previous poll from November. However, even though President Dilma has a comfortable lead ...

Sweet bird of mine
TURKEY · In Brief · 21 Mar 2014

Sometimes one sentence- more than many scholarly articles- sums up the political situation in a country. As of today, for Turkey, that sentence has become “Twitter is banned”. Less than 24 hours after Erdogan promised in a vocal rage the ban “the twitter and like”, courts obliged, granting Turkey...

Suddenly Hawkish
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 20 Mar 2014

The BSP took its cue from the US Fed and signalled today a prospective rate hike when the Monetary Board meets next week. The Fed earlier indicated that it may move forward the timetable for ending its stimulus program, with markets projecting a rate hike as early as April 2015 (from July previou...

2014 Outlook Grows Cloudy
MEXICO · Report · 20 Mar 2014

Executive Summary Now that the first phase of the structural reform process is complete, attention has shifted back toward more immediate concerns, especially the extent to which the economy is likely to grow in 2014. In previous issues of Weekly Trends: Mexico Economy we have argued that GDP gro...

In a Wait-and-See Mode, Indefinitely
TURKEY · Report · 18 Mar 2014

As expected, there was no surprise in today’s Monetary Policy Meeting decision, which left all interest rates unchanged: weekly repo at 10% and the O/N band at 8%-12 (Graph 1). In terms of the statement’s content, there was also not much new, with the main emphasis of the statement remaining on i...

Sicad II: Relief, No Solution
VENEZUELA · Report · 18 Mar 2014

Sicad II will begin operating soon under Foreign Exchange Agreement (CC) 27[1]. Individuals and companies will be able to buy and sell foreign currency and dollar-denominated securities at a price that will reflect market conditions and, more importantly, intervention by BCV and Pdvsa. Sicad II w...

President Wows the Public
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC · Report · 18 Mar 2014

Executive Summary President Danilo Medina scored more points with his February 27th mandatory speech to Congress. The respected polling firm Newlink Research found that87% of the public was either very satisfied (65%) or somewhat satisfied (22%) with his presentation, while just 13% of respondent...

Inflation: Little Room to Absorb Shocks
BRAZIL ECONOMICS · Report · 17 Mar 2014

Inflation had been decelerating, declining from 6.7% in June 2013 to 5.6% in January 2014, but the 0.69% increase of the IPCA in February ended this more favorable period, putting the rate over the past 12 months at 5.7%. The tendency from now on is for oscillation around the upper bound of the t...

Santos and Peñalosa to the run-off
COLOMBIA · In Brief · 17 Mar 2014 · 7 responses

Datexco published a new poll on March 16th, showing again that President Santos is expected to get the most votes in the May 25th presidential election (25.5%), but not enough to avoid a run-off three weeks later. However, two other results are surprising. The first one is that Enrique Peñalosa s...

The Economy in 2014: Projections And Risks
BRAZIL ECONOMICS · Forecast · 17 Mar 2014

Executive Summary A combination of wishful thinking and diagnostic mistakes has put the government in a situation, in an election year, of weak economic growth and high inflation. The outlook for 2014 is weaker GDP growth than last year, of only 1.5%, and inflation rising to around 6.3% at year-e...

Political Insights: Week of March 17
BRAZIL POLITICS · Report · 17 Mar 2014

The week begins with the new ministers’ taking office. The government will face an important test this week in its crisis with the allied base. Congress will analyze 12 presidential vetoes, among them the veto of the bill that establishes the criteria for the creation, incorporation, merger and d...

​“Referendum” tells 'yes' to Russia. And now the real fight to start.
UKRAINE · In Brief · 16 Mar 2014

No surprises, official exit-poll (only one which was allowed) reported almost unanimous (93%) support to merging with Russia. The Crimean officials report 75% participation rate while leader of Crimean Tatars, Mustafa Jamilev reports that real participation rate does not exceed 30%. Observers rep...

Weekly Tracker: March 16-22
TURKEY · Report · 16 Mar 2014

Executive Summary By taunting his detractors even at their saddest moments, PM Erdogan is inviting a Gezi-II after the March local elections. Meanwhile, the KCK, the pro-secessionist Kurdish umbrella organization, announced that it would no longer negotiate with AKP to settle the Kurdish problem....

The Economic Consequences of a Diplomatic War: Panama against Venezuela
PANAMA · Report · 13 Mar 2014

The war scenario was the Organization of American States (OEA, in Spanish), the ever-futile forum of thirty-five hemispheric countries: (“all of us minus Cuba” as someone said). The date: February 25. The trigger event: a proposal by OEA’s Panamanian Ambassador to hold special sessions to address...

Cry Wolf
PHILIPPINES · Report · 13 Mar 2014

In this slow news period, a recent analyst report caught our eye with the title "Artificial Strength in the Current Account?" The report compared Philippine trade figures against counterpart statistics reported by some of the country's major trading partners and noted huge discrepancies in the im...

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