GlobalSource Partners | Country Insights

President Maduro’s announcements on October 20 send a message to his radical followers: the government deepens economic controls and will stay on course even if it were to lose control of the National Assembly. The announcements hurt business expectations, deepen the recession and leave intact th...

Panama’s Tax Information Stance Amidst Pressure from the International Community

PANAMA · Report · 21 Oct 2015

Executive Summary In recent years, a new focus on transparency and exchange of information, efforts led by the G-20 and implemented and monitored by the OECD, has been in the forefront of the international agenda. Many countries and multilateral organizations are shifting their policies to move a...

Economics: Muddled Outlook for Special Zones

MEXICO · Report · 21 Oct 2015

Executive Summary On September 29 the administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto sent Congress a draft of a Federal Law to establish Special Economic Zones to promote sustained and balanced economic growth in the regions of the country with the least degree of social development. The factor t...

Politics: Initial Preview of 2016 Elections

MEXICO · Report · 21 Oct 2015

Executive Summary Gubernatorial elections will be held next year in 12 states: nine are currently controlled by the PRI while the governors in the remaining three were elected as part of an alliance between the PAN and the PRD. These contests will occur in a national political context strikingly ...

MPC: Toward a Simpler World?

TURKEY · Report · 21 Oct 2015

As expected, the Monetary Policy Committee did not change the key interest rates today (Graph 1). The economic content of the statement was also unchanged, but the last paragraph on the future direction of monetary policy decisions has gone through a number of interesting alterations. This paragr...

Facing the Growth Test in 2016

HUNGARY · Forecast · 20 Oct 2015

GDP growth slowdown, verified by data for Q2 and beyond, will probably persist for the rest of 2015 and 2016, with annual growth at 2.5% this year, just 1.2% in 2016, and a recovery to 2% in 2017, in response to the pick-up of EU transfer distributions from the EU’s 2014-2020 budget. Factors behi...

The Embattled Finale of Humala’s Term

PERU · Report · 20 Oct 2015

With the elections just six months away, the most likely candidates have already announced their plans to run. More than 10 candidates are expected to compete, with Keiko Fujimori, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski and Alan Garcia leading the pack. The Humala regime is ending weak, and with a dire need to...

EU deal could forge a new Turkey story

TURKEY · In Brief · 20 Oct 2015

Increasingly, Turkish elections are becoming a sub-plot in the greater Turkish story that is being gradually created. This story entails severe risks, such as PKK and ISIS terror, Kurdish unrest and the fall-out from the escalating war in Syria. Yet under modest assumptions, the benefits could be...

Week of October 19

BRAZIL POLITICS · Report · 19 Oct 2015

Impeachment is still on the agenda. Eduardo Cunha will present an appeal to the STF against the decision that suspended the procedure he proposed for the impeachment request. The opposition will present a new impeachment request on Tuesday. The Ethics Council may choose a rapporteur for the case ...

Might Renewed Growth Help the Fiscal Adjustment?

BRAZIL ECONOMICS · Report · 19 Oct 2015

Brazil today is facing a complex set of problems. Beside a moral crisis, the country is experiencing two other interconnected crises: a fiscal crisis and a political crisis. The government is weak and does not have sufficient support to carry out the needed fiscal adjustment, which negatively aff...

Resumption of Growth: Official Discourse versus Reality

BRAZIL ECONOMICS · Report · 19 Oct 2015

The economic team insists that the Brazilian economy will start recovering soon, boosting tax revenues, which is necessary to generate primary surpluses. But a large mass of data indicates exactly the opposite. Two of these indicators are household consumption and GDP in the service sector. Numbe...

Weekly Tracker: October 18-24

TURKEY · Report · 18 Oct 2015

Turkey and EU began negotiations on a deal that would see Turkey stop the flow of Syrian migrants to the latter in return for, among other things, opening of 6 new chapters. A break-through would be magnificent in terms of reinvigorating the “convergence play", but it is too early to bet on it be...

Economics: Mexico’s TPP Letdown

MEXICO · Report · 14 Oct 2015

Executive Summary Following five years of negotiations (only three in the case of Mexico, which joined the talks in 2012) a basic agreement has been reached to sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership, although many legal details have yet to be finalized. The idea for the treaty arose out of an agreeme...

Politics: Corruption and Independent Candidates

MEXICO · Report · 14 Oct 2015

Since the attempt to re-launch the government around the time of President Enrique Peña Nieto’s third State of the Nation address, politics has settled into some semblance of calm, with the exception of the frictions that have played out between the Mexican government and international human righ...

Did Ankara tragedy bring the parties closer?

TURKEY · In Brief · 14 Oct 2015

Once again, I’m using the opportunity provided by a reader in the form of a question to write an update. May I take this opportunity to kindly ask all of our readers to use our website to post their questions to me, Cosmo and Dr Murat Ucer? This is the question: Hi. Clearly the attack was a huge ...