CHILE - Report 21 Jan 2015

Executive Summary Time and again, economists have revised down expected growth for 2015, this time, from 2.7% in December to 2.6% in January (Central Bank's Survey of Economists). The Imacec (monthly index of economic activity) expanded a meager 1.3% in the 12 months to November, while the yoy...

COLOMBIA - Report 21 Jan 2015

Executive Summary

This year will be rough, and next year even rougher. While the full impact of plummeting oil prices will only hit fiscal accounts next year, the government faces huge challenges now in trying to calm investors’ jitters, and to restore confidence. This will involve s...

MEXICO - Report 21 Jan 2015

Executive Summary

The international oil market has continued to experience an excess supply of crude, and except in the United States, weak demand through the first weeks of 2015. As a result, the prices of all varieties of crude have been plummeting.

As we have mentioned in...

MEXICO - Report 21 Jan 2015

Executive Summary

Last week produced numerous reminders of the internal party divisions plaguing the opposition. The center-right PAN rebuffed the request of Margarita Zavala to run for Congress, prompting the wife of ex Mexican President Felipe Calderón and former member of Congres...

INDONESIA - Report 21 Jan 2015

Executive Summary Three days before the new year 2015, an Indonesian-Malaysian aircraft lost contact halfway between Surabaya, Indonesia’s second largest city, and Singapore, a two-hour flight. AirAsia is a low-cost airline owned by Tony Fernandes, a successful Malaysian airline businessman wh...

BRAZIL POLITICS - Report 20 Jan 2015

President Dilma’s second-term economics team makes its first international trip:Joaquim Levy (Finance) and Alexandre Tombini (Central Bank) participate in the World Economic Forum in Davos, but Dilma Rousseff cancelled her participation due to the inauguration of reelected Bolivian president, ...

INDIA - Report 20 Jan 2015

Executive Summary

When the Modi administration took charge, there was euphoria and a genuine sense of possibility. However, the first eight months do not bode well. The economic downturn that began in 2010 has not reversed, the fiscal situation remains daunting, and a small part of t...

TURKEY - Report 20 Jan 2015

The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) reduced its one-week repo rate by a relatively sizable 50 bps to 7.75%, while keeping the O/N corridor intact (see chart).

The move was relatively unexpected in the sense that the majority of participants in the recent CNBC-e poll, for instance, had...

RUSSIA ENERGY / FINANCE - In Brief 19 Jan 2015

CBR published its preliminary BoP estimate for 2014 and 4q2014. It is f...

ECUADOR - Report 19 Jan 2015

Executive Summary

The government announced that Eximbank and the China Development Bank had agreed to extend $7.5 billion in loans.Though Minister of Finance Fausto Herrera said $4 billion would probably be disbursed in 2015, it’s likely that only $1.5 billion will be available to he...

BRAZIL ECONOMICS - Report 19 Jan 2015

The steady decline of industrial output in 2014 is one of the reasons for the stagnation of the IBC-Br (Graph 1). Although there are some discrepancies between the quarterly variations of GDP and the IBC-Br, they tend to even out over longer periods, during which the IBC-Br acts as a good proxy f...

TURKEY - Report 18 Jan 2015

Executive Summary

As ISIS and Yemeni al-Qaeda urge their followers to attack Europe, authorities in large EU countries remain on high alert, leading us to think that Charlie Hebdo-like incidents may occur more frequently. Ankara, too, remains deeply concerned about contagion from fun...

PERU - Report 16 Jan 2015

Executive Summary

Congress approved most of the Finance Ministry’s proposed economic stimulus measures, as expected. A few are still pending, including measures that soften conditions for job cuts, especially prized by businesses.

But a law that allows new workers under age 2...

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC - Report 16 Jan 2015

Executive Summary

Preliminary figures from the Central Bank indicate that GDP growth for 2014 exceeded expectations.It recorded an increase of 7.1% compared to 2013, the highest in Latin America. All economic sectors registered growth. The leading activities were mining (20.9%), cons...