news of South America

Every morning I skim the top stories in the (Spanish-language) Salta newspaper, El Tribuno Salta, for an overview of what's going on.

Searching this morning for more news on Uruguay's proposed tax change on assets held overseas, I discovered Merco Press, a South Atlantic News Agency. This site is in English and has daily links to news in each country of South America, e.g.:

Argentina

Uruguay

Paraguay

Read Merco's story about Uruguay's proposed tax change.

Read today's story in Uruguay's El Pais about the proposed tax change:

"The Government's second vice president, Elena Salgado, announced in an interview with Bloomberg that the new tax for the rich will run "for a few years." "What we want is for people with ability to make an extraordinary contribution over this period of economic crisis and its effects, a few years," says the Minister of Economy."

This new tax figure, she adds, will have a "reasonable impact" on state revenue, but unless it raises more than 5,000 million, will force the 2-point increase in VAT that will come into effect on 1 July.

Salgado analyzes throughout the interview the new cost-cutting measures to reduce the deficit approved last week, and notes that the two main objectives of the Executive at this time are labor reform and financial restructuring. Two factors that help cope with the deficit crisis. On this last point, the economy minister says there will not be "more nightmares" after the approval of the emergency fund of 750.000 million available to the euro countries.

As for financial reform, the minister is confident that extending the Banking Ordinance Restructuring Fund, the reserve that currently has up to 12,000 million euros to help mergers of entities, "will not be very meaningful." "In late June we will have a more solvent and robust system," she says. She also reaffirms the Government's willingness to reform the case law later to facilitate access to financial markets, but "to preserve its core elements" such as social work.

On measures to tackle high unemployment and labor market changes, Salgado argues that "ultimately what will determine the validity of the reform will be the ability to improve the two areas" that the Government considers to be priorities: reduce the existing duality between those with temporary contracts and those with permanent, and increase the internal flexibility of companies. That is, the application of the so-called German model so that adjustments in output will not necessarily translate into job cuts and/or working hours. [my cleanup of Google's translation]

Another newspaper I scan is the English-language Buenos Aires Herald.

I use Google's Chrome browser with the Google translation plug-in, so that I can translate any web page with one click. This plug-in also works with Firefox, Safari, & Explorer.