Category: Argentina

Argentine Banco Hipotecario is planning to issuing $100 million of five-year non-guaranteed priority notes yielding between 9.5% and 9.75%. The issue will be arranged by Citigroup and Deutsche Bank. Standard & Poor’s has speculatively assigned a B- to the issue.

Preliminary figures show that Argentina’s rate of inflation in October slowed to 0.8% from 1.2% in September. The slowdown is due to the seasonal drop in certain areas of agricultural produce with a high preponderance in the consumer price index.

Argentina has confirmed that Venezuela bought $336.8 million of its latest Boden 2015 issued last week. The US dollar-denominated 10-year securities were issued with a fixed yield of 8.75%. Argentina sold a total of $631.6 million of the paper at the auction last Wednesday.

Argentina raised $631.6 million in its latest issue of Boden 2015 offering a fixed yield of 8.75%.The government fixed the yield following the failed sale last month when the sovereign refused to pay the average yield bid by the market of 8.8%. $493.9 million, or 78% of the issue, was bought by state-owned Banco de la Nación.

President Néstor Kirchner of Argentina has received a vote of confidence from the public in the country’s mid-term elections on Sunday. His “Frente para la Victoria” party and allies made strong gains, increasing seats in the 257-member Chamber of Deputies from 40 to 105 and gaining three more senators to total 17 out of 72. The election provides Kirchner with legitimacy since he won the presidency by default in April 2003 after Carlos Menem withdrew from the race after the first round.

Analysts in Argentina have revised their estimates of the country’s inflation rates upwards, saying it will hit 11.3% this year. September’s rate of inflation was 1.2%, above expectations.

Early indications are that President Nestor Kirchner of Argentina has won the key congressional seat of the province of Buenos Aires with his wife, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner taking a Senate seat with over 40% of the votes against her rival, Hilda “Chiche” Gonzalez, wife of ex president Eduardo Duhalde, who polled 22%. Sunday’s Congressional elections are seen as the first real test of approval by the country of Kirchner’s presidency since he won office in April 2003 with only 22% of the votes in the first round of elections. Voters are electing representatives for half of the Argentine lower Chamber of Deputies and a third of the Senate.

Industrial production in Argentina rose 8.6% in September according to the government’s Indec statistics bureau. On a seasonally adjusted basis, industrial production rose 1.2% month on month in September, after increasing 2% in August. Industrial products are this year’s fastest growing export category. Economists at CSFB say industry’s strong performance should help deliver 7.8% economic growth this year.

Uruguayan President Tabaré Vázquez says that construction of planned paper plants in Fray Bentos close to the border with Argentina will go ahead as planned. Protestors in Argentina had tried to block the projects citing potential environmental damage. Construction is scheduled for to begin next February. The plants, to be built by Botnia of Finland and Spain’s Empresa Nacional de Celulosa de España, will cost about $2 billion.

Argentina’s Oil and Gas Workers’ Union has suspended strike action to start talks with the government regarding pay. Companies affected by the stoppage included Repsol YPF and Petrobras.