GlobalSource Partners | Country Insights

The communications ministry announced on October 4 that the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) would receive a bailout of R2.1 billion from the National Treasury (NT). This follows more than two years of the SABC’s struggle to secure funds from the NT, and the funding should therefore ...

Synthesis of the Brazilian Economy

BRAZIL ECONOMICS · Report · 07 Oct 2019

The level of political uncertainty has increased with the set of actions guided by representatives of the three branches of government, tailor made to protect the interests of influential groups. On the economic front, contrary winds from the global slowdown plus internal factors continue to rest...

Politics: The fight over Morena’s future

MEXICO · Report · 07 Oct 2019

The governing National Regeneration Movement (Morena) party will elect a new national leadership when 3,000 delegates meet in late November. Four people are competing to become the party’s next president. The winner will wield enormous influence over candidate selection and campaign finance in fu...

The Controversy over the Spending Cap

BRAZIL ECONOMICS · Report · 07 Oct 2019

The nervousness over the sluggish cyclical recovery has prompted the suggestion that the spending cap established by Constitutional Amendment 95 should be relaxed to restore the government’s ability to use countercyclical fiscal measures. In support of this proposal, its advocates argue that with...

Thinking about monetary policy

PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 07 Oct 2019

In our quarterly report last August, we asked whether the key policy rate, the overnight RRP rate, will soon return to 3%, its level before the Monetary Board started tightening in May last year. In that tightening cycle, the overnight RRP rate rose by a total of 175bp, ending at 4.75%, before mo...

Castillo projected to defeat Fernandez in the PLD primaries

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC · In Brief · 06 Oct 2019

With a very narrow margin, Gonzalo Castillo, the dolphin of Danilo Medina, is projected as the winner of PLD primaries, defeating former president Leonel Fernández for the presidential candidacy. With 97.5% of the voting booth computed, Castillo reached 48.4% of the total votes, just 14 thousand ...

The fallout after Vizcarra’s decision to dissolve Congress

PERU · In Brief · 06 Oct 2019

After the September 30 dissolution of Congress, a few facts remain clear:This action is considered illegal by most prominent constitutional scholars and constitutional experts (see attached declaration published by 11 constitutional experts in Spanish ). However, there are many lawyers that argue...

Preventive protest sets redlines for Zelenskiy

UKRAINE · In Brief · 06 Oct 2019

Today more than 10 thnd people gathered at Maydan Nezalezhnosty, the central square of the country, to protest against ‘Steinmeier formula’ that President Zelenskiy officially accepted. It’s appeared to be the largest public protest since the Revolution of Dignity in 2013. Andrey Bohdan, Chief of...

Odds of a military campaign increase

TURKEY · Report · 06 Oct 2019 · 3 responses

This week’s note is very brief. On politics, we focus on Turkey’s potential Syria campaign, as President Erdogan has served final notice on Saturday that the Turkish military has been given marching orders to enter North East Syria. He wants a safe zone badly for a variety of reasons. The risk...

Gulf weekly: Saudi rating downgraded; hints of possible Saudi-Iran talks

GULF COUNTRIES · Report · 06 Oct 2019

Fitch’s downgrade of Saudi Arabia to A, in the aftermath of the Abqaiq attack but still leaves its rating well above market-implied levels. The fact that Qatar’s GDP contracted for the first in 26 years is less dramatic than it sounds. There was also GDP data for Saudi (fine) and PMI data for Sa...

Hungary in the centre of the Brexit endgame?

HUNGARY · In Brief · 06 Oct 2019

In a rather unusual story, two British newspapers (Telegraph and Express) reported Hungarian foreign minister Péter Szíjjártó and Hungary's ambassador to the UK to have been spotted as leaving the building of the UK Cabinet Office on Friday morning, around the time when PM Boris Johnson reportedl...

Moreno’s economic knock out

ECUADOR · Report · 05 Oct 2019

Moreno took many by surprise announcing an elimination of fuel subsidies instead of the expected VAT increase requested by the IMF to comply with a 1.5% of GDP increase in revenues for next year.This measure needs no approval from the assembly and would render results starting this month if the g...

Politics: Education counter-reform has arrived

MEXICO · Report · 30 Sep 2019

Last week Congress approved an administration proposal to roll back the essential aspects of the 2013 reform that were designed to free the public education system of decades of corporatist political rule in which the teachers' union had come to exert control over most of the system. The core ele...

El SALVADOR: Improvement likely in 2020

CENTRAL AMERICA · Report · 30 Sep 2019

El Salvador has this year been suffering the combined effects of the political campaign that put President Nayib Bukele in office starting June 1, 2019, and from adverse international economic conditions, with worsening perspectives for 2020. Uncertainty and poor expectations for consumers and in...

Danylyuk has resigned

UKRAINE · In Brief · 30 Sep 2019

On Friday, Sept 27, Alex Danylyuk, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security Council wrote on his Facebook page that he confirms his resignation. Press-secretary of Volodymyr Zelenskiy wrote on her page that Danylyuk has submitted a request for resignation before President departed to the US. Toda...