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Ecuador Hopes to Pay Off Debt to Perenco This Year: Minister

Ecuador plans to pay off a debt it owes to French oil company Perenco at the end of this year and is open to a dialogue to determine how the payment should be made, the country's economy minister said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Ecuador is obliged to pay compensation to Perenco after the World Bank's International Centre for Investment Disputes (ICSID) ruled the country had unlawfully ended a production-sharing agreement with Perenco and owed it $391 million including interest.

Ecuador
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LATAM Airlines Group to Exit Chapter 11 in 4Q22

LATAM Airlines Group hopes to exit chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the last quarter of 2022 after securing the financing plus U.S. bankruptcy court and shareholder approval for its restructuring plan, says Group Chief Executive Officer Roberto Alvo, ch-aviation.com reported. "We have closed the second quarter with significant progress in our reorganization process under Chapter 11, and we hope to emerge from it during the last quarter of this year, Alvo said in a statement.

Chile
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Brazil's Monthly Inflation Registers Record Decline on Energy Tax Cuts

Brazil's consumer prices decreased more than expected in July, the country's statistics agency said on Tuesday, with the steepest drop ever on the benchmark IPCA index off the back of a string of anti-inflation measures by the government and central bank, Reuters reported. Prices in Latin America's largest economy fell by 0.68% last month, the IBGE statistics agency said. It was the lowest rate recorded since inflation measurements began in January 1980, IBGE said.
Brazil
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Chile Inflation Tops 13% as Weak Peso Adds to Price Pressure

Chile’s inflation hit a new 28-year high in July as food and transportation prices surged and the peso plunged to an all-time low, boosting pressure on the central bank to extend its aggressive interest rate hikes, Bloomberg News reported. Prices rose 13.1% from a year prior, more than the 13% median forecast of economists in a Bloomberg survey. Monthly inflation stood at 1.4%, the national statistics institute reported on Monday. Chile’s annual inflation rate has risen for 17 consecutive months amid several back-to-back shocks.
Chile
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Brazil Economy Ministry Sees 6 Billion Reais 2022 Primary Surplus

Brazil's Economy Ministry expects the central government to post a primary surplus of 6 billion reais ($1.15 billion) this year, its first since 2013, according to internal estimates seen by Reuters. An official from the ministry, speaking on condition of anonymity as the calculations are not public, called the estimate conservative because it considers 36 billion reais in extraordinary dividends in 2022.
Brazil
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Argentina Vows End of Money Printing to Battle 60% Inflation

Argentina’s new Economy Minister Sergio Massa pledged to stop printing money that helps fuel runaway inflation, outlining his strategy to turn around the country’s deepening crisis, Bloomberg News reported. Massa rolled out his economic roadmap Wednesday night after being sworn in by President Alberto Fernandez as the third such minister in a month. Massa’s measures also focused on boosting exports, reducing the country’s fiscal deficit and increasing the central bank’s dwindling reserves.
Argentina
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Argentina Is Running Out of Cash to Stave Off Devaluation

With inflation hurtling toward triple digits and, economists say, just a policy mistake or two away from setting the stage for hyperinflation, Argentina's central bank is desperately trying to avert a peso devaluation that would only trigger another wave of price hikes, Bloomberg News reported. Each day, the bank dispatches its traders to sell dollars and buy pesos that no one wants. On average, they’re burning through $60 million a day. For now, that’s kept the peso mostly steady in the primary foreign-exchange market.
Argentina
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Argentina’s New Economy Minister Readies Plan to Boost Dollar Revenue

New Economy Minister Sergio Massa is preparing a set of measures to address one of Argentina’s key problems: a chronic shortage of dollars that has caused the U.S. currency to soar in parallel exchange markets, Bloomberg News reported. Massa, who was named by President Alberto Fernandez last week as the head of an expanded and empowered economy ministry, is expected to unveil incentives to exporters as well as policies to attract more foreign investment and to capture additional tourism revenue, according to people with knowledge of the plan.
Argentina
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Brazil Posts $5.4 Billion Trade Surplus in July, Lower Than Expected

Brazil posted a lower than expected trade surplus of $5.444 billion in July, official data showed on Monday, with growth in imports again strongly outpacing that of exports, Reuters reported. The figure came below the median forecast of a $6.993 billion surplus in a Reuters poll. Imports rose 41.6% in July over the same month last year, to $24.511 billion, the Economy Ministry said. Exports grew by 23%, to $29.955 billion, added the ministry, stressing that higher prices boosted the results in both cases.
Brazil
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Some Ecuador Dollar Bond Holders Received Interest Payments

Some holders of Ecuador's sovereign dollar-denominated bonds maturing in 2030, 2035 and 2040 have received interest payments which had been due on the securities on July 31, Reuters reported. A Luxembourg bailiff had ordered banks to freeze assets held by Ecuador at accounts in the country as a result of a dispute over a $391 million settlement award that Anglo-French oil company Perenco says remains unpaid, a document seen by Reuters show.
Ecuador
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