Word: latinization
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Five years later, Argentina's rapid recovery still has analysts doing double takes. Since President Néstor Kirchner was elected in 2003, annual growth has averaged 9%, the best in Latin America. Argentina has parlayed a cheaper but stable peso into record export earnings. "Argentina," crows Central Bank president Martín Redrado, "is enjoying its most solid macroeconomic context of the past 30 years." In Brazil, Lula's election (and 2006 re-election) did not render the region's largest economy a leftist basket case. Instead, inflation has fallen from 12.5% in 2002 to less than 4% today. Brazil...
...Although Latin America attracts nowhere near the foreign direct investment (FDI) that Asia or even Eastern Europe does, competitiveness is on the rise among South America's ABC countries--Argentina, Brazil and Chile. Like most other Latin countries, the ABCs were pulled on the economic torture rack during the 20th century between socially negligent capitalism and fiscally profligate populism. But today they lead a potent common market, Mercosur. (Chile is an associate member.) And while each has a leftist President--Chile's Michelle Bachelet is also a socialist--the ABCs are spelling a model, "pragmatic socialism," says Jerry Haar...
Argentina is just as sensibly working to cut its dependence on commodities-- the bane of almost every Latin economy. Argentina, which has one of the region's more skilled workforces, recently passed a biotechnology-promotion law to channel incentives to biotech firms. One, Bio Sidus, with $40 million in annual sales, is pioneering an affordable human-growth hormone from the milk of genetically modified calves cloned 60 miles (97 km) from Buenos Aires. "Our traditional cattle-ranching experience gives us a big advantage," says Bio Sidus president Marcelo Argüelles. "But our biggest challenge is obtaining financing at international rates...
Chile, meanwhile, seems to be doing everything right. Though it is small (pop. 16 million), its GDP is $145 billion, one of Latin America's highest per capita, and is expected to grow more than 5% this year with little inflation (though recent labor and student protests indicate Chileans want a larger slice of that wealth). Its size precludes large-scale manufacturing, so it heavily promotes value-added industries for its myriad commodities, like copper and timber. Compañía Sud Americana de Vapores, Latin America's largest maritime-transport concern, reflects how Chile has turned itself from a hemispheric...
Chile's FDI measures more than 4% of GDP, also tops in South America, largely because Chile keeps corruption, bureaucracy and undue tax burdens out of investors' paths. Its judicial system is perhaps the most transparent in Latin America. "Investors realize our institutions function," says Osvaldo Rosales, international-trade director at the U.N.'s Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean...