South America

South America’s largest economy faces a difficult balancing act to avoid a potentially disastrous spiral of economic contraction as it seeks to control inflation, the Financial Times reported. Brazil’s planning minister Nelson Barbosa warned that he expected only a very gradual recovery from this year’s recession, in contrast with previous downturns during the past decade when the country immediately bounced back with rapid growth.

Three-quarters of the world’s workers are temporary, casual or self-employed and this sort of employment is likely to become more prevalent, says the International Labour Organisation. The ILO, a UN agency that specialises in work, analysed employment patterns in 180 countries and found that the “standard” model of permanent full-time employment was “less and less dominant” in rich, developed economies, the Financial Times reported. In developing economies, salaried employment was still growing as a share of the total workforce but that historical trend appeared to be slowing.

Thirteen Brazilian and international banks filed a lawsuit in New York on Tuesday against two units of ailing engineering and oil conglomerate Grupo Schahin to recover $371 million in overdue principal and interest on loans, Reuters reported. The lawsuit comes weeks after Schahin sought for protection from creditors in Brazil and the United States, and fired 2,500 workers as a corruption scandal at key client Petróleo Brasileiro SA hampered its efforts to refinance up to 6.5 billion reais ($2.1 billion) in debt.

For years, Venezuela has had a hole in its pocket, a very big hole. The government’s complex currency system has led to exorbitant schemes by importers, who wildly inflate the value of goods brought into the country to grab American dollars at rock-bottom exchange rates, the International New York Times reported. Sometimes, they fake the shipments altogether and import nothing at all. Then they just pocket the dollars that the government provides, or sell some of the money for a gargantuan profit on the soaring black market here for American currency.

Brazilian engineering conglomerate Grupo OAS expects revenue to shrink more than 50 percent by 2017 as it sells operations and refocuses on civil construction after filing for bankruptcy protection due to a bribery scandal at a state-run oil company, Reuters reported. The filing by OAS, the third-biggest builder in Brazil last year, was the highest-profile bankruptcy filing to follow a sweeping police investigation of a price-fixing and kickback scheme at state-controlled Petroleo Brasileiro SA, or Petrobras.

Argentina’s thirst for dollars has been temporarily quenched by a $1.4bn bond sale but a state visit to Russia this week is unlikely to yield significant support for its languishing economy, the Financial Times reported. Hindered from issuing debt in international capital markets by a long-running dispute with a group of holdout hedge funds, Argentina succeeded in issuing dollar-denominated debt under local law on Tuesday to bolster precariously low foreign exchange reserves.

Another Brazilian company has fallen to the corruption scandal surrounding Brazil’s petroleum giant, Petrobras: Schahin Group requested on Friday a bankruptcy court’s protection for 28 of its subsidiaries.

Forty-three percent of companies in Colombia's oil sector are at high risk of going bankrupt as the industry reels from the recent halving of oil prices, according to a survey presented to the Andean country's congress this week, Reuters reported. The survey by the Colombia's companies' regulator polled 53 companies with total assets of about $10 billion but it did not include state-run oil producer Ecopetrol or two Toronto-listed companies, Pacific Rubiales Energy Corp and Canacol Energy Ltd.

A reorganization plan to help oil rig supplier Sete Brasil Participações SA remain in business should be ready by the end of June, after shareholders and creditors agreed to extend financing as credit dried up, the president of Brazil's state development bank BNDES said on Thursday. Last week, commercial banks signed a memorandum of understanding to avert demanding repayment of as much as 11 billion reais ($3.7 billion) in loans to Sete Brasil that matured this month, extending them for a further 90 days.

Police arrested the treasurer of Brazil's ruling Workers' Party on Wednesday, bringing the country's largest corruption scandal a step closer to President Dilma Rousseff's government, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. Joao Vaccari Neto was arrested in connection with a probe into money laundering and illegal donations to the party, public prosecutor Carlos Lima said. Mr Neto is the latest the latest prominent Brazilian caught up in a multibillion-dollar probe.