In Asia, around 5% of GDP is invested in infrastructure, said Cesar Canedo-Arguelles, CEO at Corporacion Interamericana para el Financiamiento de Infraestructura (CIFI), a Panama-based development bank that provides financing and advisory services to small and medium-sized infrastructure projects in Latin America. “In Latin America the figure is much lower, but that is where we need to be,” he said. Yet despite the need for such significant investment, in Latin America – as elsewhere – infrastru

Rarely does a week goes by when Petrobras is not in the news, for reasons both good and bad. On February 24, the giant Brazilian oil firm, plagued by low oil prices and mounting debts, and immersed in a politically-tinged corruption scandal, was handed the latest hit to its credit rating, this time from Moody’s, which downgraded its senior unsecured debt to B3 from Ba3. A week earlier, Standard & Poor’s automatically lowered its standalone credit profile to b– from b+, after downgrading Braz

Once upon a time, Latin America’s capital markets universe was a comfortingly binary place, simple and one-dimensional. Deals happened or they didn’t. Activity was there or it wasn’t. Banker dozed at their desks or worked around the clock. But that was then. Now, the region is more a hodgepodge of markets, some doing reasonably well (Colombia, Mexico, Peru) and others very badly (Brazil), with a few sinking rapidly into the mire (Venezuela). (Argentina, which occupies a parallel universe, is fin

Ecuador will struggle to cover growing financing gaps in 2016 as funding options narrow for the Latin American oil exporter in the face of political pressures and rock-bottom crude prices. The Andean country instilled some market confidence in December after fully repaying the US$650m 2015s – the first time that the country had ever covered a maturing global bond. But access to the international markets has effectively slammed shut this year as investors flee EM credits with high exposure to oil

Long the market pariah, Argentina is quickly turning a new leaf and becoming the rising star in Latin America as the new government reverses leftist policies and reaches an historic accord with major holdouts that have kept it locked out of the capital markets for over a decade. Success in Argentina could just provide the upside investors and banks alike need in an otherwise gloomy backdrop for the region. President Mauricio Macri has moved faster than many had expected since he narrowly defeate

When Mexico opened up its energy sector to foreign investors for the first time in almost three-quarters of a century, it was not banking on oil prices to plunge to their lowest level in more than a decade. That downturn has taken its toll on the government’s finances, with spending plans ripped up and projects canned. Now, the government is seeking other ways to boost infrastructure investment, and it has been looking to its northern neighbour for inspiration. Last autumn, Mexico passed legisla

By any stretch of the imagination, Venezuela has problems. Under the stewardship of former bus driver, president Nicolas Maduro, the country is falling apart. It has the distinctly dubious honour of both the world’s worst inflation and GDP figures. Despite central bank assurances in mid-February that the country’s inflation rate in 2015 was only 180.9%, the International Monetary Fund believes that the real figure is closer to 700%. The IMF also reckons that the economy is likely to contract by