Employment in Mexico’s maquiladora industry rose by 7.8 percent year-on-year in the first quarter, helped by increasing demand for manufactured goods in the US. Mexico has some 2,800 maquiladora plants, which account for 50 percent of Mexican exports.
Category: Regions
Posted inDaily Brief
Mexico: Bond Yield Falls
The yield on Mexico’s 10-year treasury note declined Monday to 9.69 percent, its lowest level in more than three months on expectations that slowing inflation may lead the central bank to reverse more than a year of interest-rate increases. Mexico’s annual inflation rate fell to 4.6 percent in April from a 20-month high of 5.4 percent in November. The central bank last week decided to hold its benchmark lending rate at a two-year high of 9.75 percent.
Posted inDaily Brief
Bolivia: Defense Chief Pledges Support
Gonzalo Arredondo, Bolivia’s Defense Minister, announced the military’s support for beleaguered President Carlos Mesa after two junior officers called for his resignation and demanded the oil and gas industry be nationalized. The officers’ demands come as peasants and miners pressure Congress to raise taxes on oil and gas production and to renegotiate contracts with international oil firms.
Posted inDaily Brief
AMLO Challenges Banamex Sale
Mexico City Mayor Andrés López Obrador says that if elected president next year he would try to tax shareholders who sold Banamex, the country’s biggest bank, to Citigroup for $12.7 billion in 2001. Sellers avoided taxes because the deal was structured as a public offer on the Mexican stock exchange. Populist López Obrador is a frontrunner in the election race. However, he also said he would finance government spending by improving efficiency, not taxes, and ruled out renegotiating the Nafta trade pact with the US and Canada.
Posted inDaily Brief
Brigitte Posch, vice president and senior credit officer at Moody’s, is confirmed to speak at LatinFinance’s Inaugural “Cumbre Financiera Mexicana” on July 13-14 in Mexico City
Ms. Posch will be part of a panel of experts on the “Evolution of Local Markets”. The meeting is a high-level and spirited debate and discussion on the ever-changing face of Mexico’s dynamic financial markets. The invitation-only event will provide a unique forum for investors, financiers, government and corporate leaders to network, analyze shared challenges, and identify new opportunities. To apply for an invitation click here.
Posted inDaily Brief
WHAT’S (NOT) GOING ON IN COLOMBIA?
Colombian Finance Minister Alberto Carrasquilla has admitted the obvious: Congress will not approve his “budget flexibilization” legislation. Instead of coming to grips with Colombia’s disastrous public finances, the politicos – with encouragement from President Alvaro Uribe – have focused on approving his reelection laws and a plan to disarm Colombia’s insurgents.
Yet the government had promised the IMF that Congress would approve a plan to reform its inoperable budget process by the end of June. But the politicians have already weakened the mind-numbingly dull law. And while the minutiae of budget procedures are certainly tedious, it is hard to exaggerate the importance of Carrasquilla’s package. With luck, Congress will revisit a strengthened law later this year.
Colombia was once an investment grade country until a financial crisis and a batty new constitution in the late 1990s turned it into one of Latin America’s less impressive credits. Politicians adopted Argentine notions of fiscal responsibility. Colombia now faces years of hard work to get its finances under control. Sound finances are a necessary condition for stable growth, so making the politicians focus on balancing the books would do Colombia a lot more good than reelecting Uribe.
Posted inDaily Brief
Mexico: Bank Profits Rise
Mexican banks registered a net profit of $980 million for the first quarter, up 31% year-on-year. Bank assets totaled $194 billion at the end of the quarter, equivalent to only 28% of Mexico’s GDP.
Posted inDaily Brief
Ecuador: Protests Spread
PetroEcuador, Ecuador’s state oil company, said protests in Orellana province spread, idling more oil wells. Production was cut by 34,400 barrels as protesters blocked access to oil facilities, demanding better roads and health and education centers. PetroEcuador had been producing about 200,000 barrels of oil a day before the protest, which began last weekend.
Posted inDaily Brief
Colombia: Bond Yield Falls
Colombia’s benchmark 10-year peso bond yield declined at a government auction Wednesday to 11.74 percent from 12.1 percent at an auction two weeks ago. The government sold all $107 million of the 10-year, six-year, five-year, three-year and one-year securities it offered. Colombia plans to sell between $900 million and $1.2 billion worth of peso-denominated bonds in the domestic market in the second quarter, after selling $1.4 billion of the securities in the first quarter.
Posted inDaily Brief
Ecopetrol’s Net Rises
Colombia’s state-run oil company Empresa Colombiana de Petroleos (Ecopetrol) posted a net profit of $373 million for the first quarter, up 39 percent year-on-year. Revenues grew 16 percent to $1.74 billion. Ecopetrol is aiming to boost oil exploration in Colombia and has promised to award new concessions in order to increase output. Most of the company’s oil fields are located in Magdalena province in northern Colombia.