Category: Emerging Markets

Argentina: The Week at a Glance

Teneo July 22, 2020

Editorial: Local Debt Restructuring Underway, Foreign Debt Still Gridlocked

Last Friday the executive submitted the bill to restructure the dollar debt under local law. This is a step in the right direction because it also fulfills the promise of matching the conditions of the proposal made to investors with foreign law bonds.… Read the rest

Argentina: The Week at a Glance

Econviews July 14, 2020

Editorial: The Financial Health of the Provinces

Argentina’s provinces finished 2019 with a primary fiscal surplus for the second year in a row. But, despite this improvement in fiscal behavior, three provinces have already defaulted this year and the fate of the rest seems to be contingent on the success of the national debt restructuring.… Read the rest

ETHIOPIA: Facing down internal and external threats

Teneo July 1, 2020

Protests have escalated rapidly in Addis Ababa and the Oromia region following the killing of a popular Oromo singer late on 29 June.
The latest violence threatens Ethiopia’s fragile political transition and clouds the outlook for the national elections (now postponed until 2021).

… Read the rest

PHILIPPINES: Duterte reluctantly agrees to doctors’ request for Manila lockdown

Teneo August 3, 2020

President Rodrigo Duterte re-imposed movement and business restrictions for the greater metropolitan Manila region from 4-18 August, following a plea Saturday from doctors’ organizations that the system could “not hold the line much longer.”… Read the rest

PHILIPPINES: The context to Duterte’s threat against the telcos

Teneo July 28, 2020

President Rodrigo Duterte’s threat to cancel the licenses of the country’s two largest telecommunications companies will be more difficult to carry out than his denial of a broadcast license to ABS-CBN this June.

… Read the rest

PHILIPPINES: Duterte’s policy speech on Monday – curb your expectations (again)

Teneo July 24, 2020

President Rodrigo Duterte will supposedly present his “roadmap to recovery” on 27 July.
However, he is unlikely to deviate from the limited stimulus being advocated by his economic team, or radically reshape his administration’s other healthcare policies.

… Read the rest

PHILIPPINES: Numbers paint a weak outlook for migrant workers

Teneo July 17, 2020

Remittances have dropped for a second straight month and a total of about 250,000 migrant workers are expected to have returned home in the next few months since the start of the pandemic, with possibly more awaiting repatriation.

… Read the rest

PHILIPPINES/INDONESIA: The two that stand apart

Teneo June 26, 2020

Of the large Southeast Asian economies, the Philippines and Indonesia continue to grapple with the highest absolute number of new daily coronavirus diagnoses, and the trend is still unclear as to whether either country has reached a plateau.… Read the rest

CHILE: Another crisis, another reshuffle

Teneo July 29, 2020

President Sebastian Pinera reshuffled his cabinet yesterday, 28 July. The widely expected reshuffle follows a heavy defeat for the government in recent votes to allow people to withdraw up to 10% of their savings from the private pension (AFP) system to support themselves through the economic crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic.… Read the rest

CHILE: Political implications of pension withdrawal initiative

Teneo July 23, 2020

The government has suffered a heavy defeat by failing to block an opposition-led initiative that would allow people to dip into their retirement savings.
While immediate-term governability can be restored by a likely cabinet reshuffle, President Sebastian Pinera is left permanently weakened, while the governing coalition is increasingly divided.

… Read the rest