Argentina's monthly inflation rate for April is expected to clock in at 7.5% according to a Reuters poll of analysts, keeping the annual rate at its quickest pace since the country emerged from a hyperinflation crisis in the early 1990s, Reuters reported. Argentina, a major global grains supplier, is battling 12-month inflation above 100%, which is one of the highest rates globally. This is hurting the centre-left Peronist administration, which had hoped to ease financial pressure on voters ahead of a tough election challenge this October.
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The economy of Peru, the world's No.2 copper producer, may have contracted in the first quarter, though the most likely scenario is for no growth at all, the head of the Andean nation's central bank Julio Velarde said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. The grim outlook comes after neighboring Chile upwardly revised its forecast for annual economic growth this year to 0.3%, reversing a previous estimate of a 0.7% contraction.
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Rio de Janeiro’s electric company says so many people are stealing power in the city’s slums that it has been pushed into default, causing a massive selloff and attracting a veteran buyer of distressed Brazilian corporations, Bloomberg News reported. Light SA lost around $200 million last year from the illegal hookups, perched like a tangle of wire birds’ nests atop power poles across Rio’s favelas. That’s even after years of investment to prevent theft. The 120-year-old utility says it can’t keep absorbing the losses, which also include delinquencies and judicial costs.
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A U.S. court of appeals has granted Venezuela a temporary stay preventing six companies from joining a proposed court auction of shares in a Citgo Petroleum parent to enforce judgments for past expropriation of assets, Reuters reported. Since March, creditors including a unit of O-I Glass, Huntington Ingalls Industries, ACL1 Investments, Koch Minerals and mining firms Rusoro Mining and Gold Reserve, have been granted rights to seize shares in the parent of Venezuela-owned refiner Citgo, PDV Holding.
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Argentines withdrew over $1 billion of US dollar deposits from the banking system from late March to the end of April as speculation spread about a potential currency devaluation in the official exchange rate, Bloomberg News reported. Dollar deposits dropped from nearly $16.4 billion on March 20 to just below $15.3 billion by the end of April, a 6.7% decline, according to central bank data released Friday. In Argentina, checking accounts are denominated in pesos but savings accounts can be denominated in US dollars, a reality after decades of currency crises and runaway inflation.
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Brazil’s central bank held its interest rate steady for the sixth straight meeting, sticking with its tough inflation warnings and tweaking its language only slightly even as President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva calls for looser monetary policy, Bloomberg News reported. The bank’s board kept the Selic unchanged at 13.75% late on Wednesday as expected by almost all economists in a Bloomberg survey. In a statement, Copom, as the board is known, made a small concession by saying a new rate hike is less likely, softening language used since September.
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Argentina is seeking new easing of targets in its $44 billion deal with the International Monetary Fund and faster payouts, and is pushing to get key IMF members the United States and Brazil to support it, Reuters reported. The country is expected to return to talks with the IMF on Thursday over amending the deal, which has come under strain amid a historic drought that has battered the country's key cash crops soy and corn, a senior economy ministry official said.
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Argentina’s international reserves have tumbled to their lowest since 2016 as the central bank drains its coffers to defend the increasingly beleaguered peso, Bloomberg News reported. The currency tumbled 13% in parallel markets last month to a record low as a historic drought sapped key crop exports, fueling a dollar shortage at the same time that inflation accelerates past 100%.
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Shareholders of embattled Brazilian retailer Americanas SA voted to ratify most of the names proposed for its board of directors, after the firm sank into bankruptcy in January following the revelation of a massive accounting error, Bloomberg News reported. At a general meeting held Saturday, Carlos Sicupira, one of the billionaire founders of 3G Capital Inc. that’s also among Americanas’ largest shareholders, was reelected to the board. Minority shareholders managed to elect Pierre Moreau.
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Argentina's central bank hiked its benchmark interest rate a huge 10 percentage points to 91% on Thursday as it tries to tame high inflation and steady the peso currency, which has tumbled in black market trading over the last week, Reuters reported. The hike, the biggest since a market meltdown in August 2019, comes after the central bank (BCRA) had already lifted the rate last week by 300 basis points to 81% in an effort to control inflation running at 104% annually. The central bank confirmed the hike in a statement after Reuters earlier reported the move, citing bank sources.
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