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2,000 | <s>[INST] The combination of over-optimistic traffic forecasts, short-term financing [/INST] costs and the existence of toll-free alternative routes meant that high tolls deterred drivers. </s> |
2,001 | <s>[INST] Since then schemes have focused on managing [/INST] existing roads in densely populated areas, allowing lower tolls to be charged. </s> |
2,002 | <s>[INST] In Brazil, for example, two local construction firms are spending $1.8 billion improving the existing 407km Sao [/INST] Paulo-Rio de Janeiro motorway under a 25year concession: the toll will be one-tenth of the level fixed for the Acapulco-Mexico city motorway (a journey of a similar distance) when that opened in 1993. </s> |
2,003 | <s>[INST] Chile is seeking up to $4 billion in private road investment, but [/INST] only on the 3,000 km (out of a network of 80,000 km) where there is enough traffic to make it pay. </s> |
2,004 | <s>[INST] Private investment in water and sewerage has [/INST] proved even harder, with the Buenos Aires scheme the only large success. </s> |
2,005 | <s>[INST] Other schemes, such as one in Mexico city, have been slowed [/INST] down because governments still shrink from allowing private operators to charge a commercial price for water, or to cut off non-payers. </s> |
2,006 | <s>[INST] Given this choosiness of investors, Latin Americans are now waking [/INST] up to the idea that the private sector will not rebuild Latin America's infrastructure on its own. </s> |
2,007 | <s>[INST] Martin Chrisney, an economist at the InterAmerican Development Bank, [/INST] reckons that the public sector will have to provide at least 75% of the region's future needs. </s> |
2,008 | <s>[INST] And in some areas-transport, water and rural [/INST] electrification in particular-most money will have to come from the state. </s> |
2,009 | <s>[INST] Economists, not engineers Can the [/INST] private sector be tempted to stump up more? </s> |
2,010 | <s>[INST] The first would be [/INST] a more plentiful supply of long-term capital. </s> |
2,011 | <s>[INST] By the end of this year two North American firms, American International [/INST] Group and GE Capital, hope to raise $i billion for their Latin American Infrastructure Fund to invest in longterm equity stakes. </s> |
2,012 | <s>[INST] But given the exchange risk involved in financing projects whose revenues are [/INST] normally in local currency, most such financing will have to come from domestic capital markets, and developing them will take time. </s> |
2,013 | <s>[INST] The other much needed change is more transparent regulation, [/INST] so that investors need no longer fear that politicians might change the rules governing a project. </s> |
2,014 | <s>[INST] In Tucuman, an Argentine province, the [/INST] authorities arbitrarily forced a private water consortium to lower its rates. </s> |
2,015 | <s>[INST] Brazil is unlikely to attract serious investors [/INST] in power generation until it sets up an independent industry regulator. </s> |
2,016 | <s>[INST] On the other hand, governments risk [/INST] angering voters if regulators are too lenient on investors. </s> |
2,017 | <s>[INST] This will be most obvious in such natural [/INST] monopolies as water and electricity, but it could be true even in telecoms. </s> |
2,018 | <s>[INST] In its rush to privatise its hopeless stateowned telephone firm [/INST] in 1990, Argentina created a juicy seven-year duopoly that has lumbered consumers with exorbitant charges for international calls. </s> |
2,019 | <s>[INST] The balance between profit [/INST] and service is hard to strike anywhere. </s> |
2,020 | <s>[INST] But it is noticeable that in Latin America only Chile has so far developed a [/INST] stable and effective regulatory system: in electricity, for example, its tariffs are designed to give an efficient operator a 10% return on investment, and are reviewed every four years. </s> |
2,021 | <s>[INST] Even in Chile some consider the safeguards [/INST] against collusion between electricity generators and distributors to be too weak. </s> |
2,022 | <s>[INST] Sucking in private money is all very well, but [/INST] governments in Latin America need to work harder on drawing up the right rules for the game. </s> |
2,023 | <s>[INST] ___ Document 219 of 400 Winter hits [/INST] Argentina Author: Anonymous Publication info: The Economist 340.7973 (Jul 6, 1996): 37-38. </s> |
2,024 | <s>[INST] accountid=28034 Abstract: While Argentina's rigid currency-board system enabled the country to conquer hyperinflation and [/INST] to achieve stunning growth, averaging 7.7% a year between 1991 and 1994, it also meant that Argentina was the prime accidental casualty of Mexico's crisis. </s> |
2,025 | <s>[INST] Recently, the country has seemed to be pulling [/INST] out of its long recession, but most Argentines are unable to detect any recovery. </s> |
2,026 | <s>[INST] Full text: WHEN, on June 3oth, for the first time Win the citY's history, the voters of [/INST] central Buenos Aires had the chance to choose their mayor, they picked Fernando de la Rua, a solid and experienced middle-class figure from the opposition Radical Party, giving him 4o% of the vote. </s> |
2,027 | <s>[INST] After all, Argentina's capital is a rich, fur-coated enclave that likes [/INST] to think of itself as European and does not have much in common with the rest of the country. </s> |
2,028 | <s>[INST] Unlike the working-class suburbs that surround it, the inner capital has never felt much [/INST] at home with the ruling Peronists, even if their current leader, President Carlos Menem, has abandoned his party's traditional populist economics in favour of the market. </s> |
2,029 | <s>[INST] Less easy for Mr Menem to ignore, however, was the scale of the [/INST] Peronists' defeat, despite his own intervention in the campaign: their 19% of the vote was their worst showing in the capital since 1983. </s> |
2,030 | <s>[INST] The jubilant Radicals claimed that the vote was "the [/INST] beginning of the end" for Menemism-one of Latin America's more successful political phenomena of the 199os. </s> |
2,031 | <s>[INST] But Mr Menem's current difficulties are symptomatic of the [/INST] emerging shape of Latin American politics in the aftermath of Mexico's currency collapse in December 1994. </s> |
2,032 | <s>[INST] Low inflation is no longer a [/INST] treasured novelty; outside Chile, sustained high growth is elusive. </s> |
2,033 | <s>[INST] What voters now worry about is [/INST] unemployment, corruption and the state's ineffectiveness in providing social services. </s> |
2,034 | <s>[INST] Its rigid currency-board system, under which the peso is fixed to the dollar and the [/INST] domestic money supply must be backed by hard-currency reserves, enabled the country to conquer hyperinflation and to achieve stunning growth, averaging 7.7% a year between 1991 and 1994. </s> |
2,035 | <s>[INST] But it also meant that [/INST] Argentina was the prime accidental casualty of Mexico's crisis. </s> |
2,036 | <s>[INST] To preserve its fixed exchange rate, Argentina opted for savage [/INST] deflation: the economy shrank by 4.4% last year and prices fell, by o.1% in the year to June. </s> |
2,037 | <s>[INST] Recently, the country has seemed [/INST] to be pulling out of its long recession. </s> |
2,038 | <s>[INST] Bank deposits are higher than in December 1994, and industrial production is rising againeven if most [/INST] economists reckon the economy this year may grow by less than half the 5% rate predicted by Domingo Cavallo, the ebullient economy minister and architect of the currency-board scheme. </s> |
2,039 | <s>[INST] But, as the southern-hemisphere winter starts [/INST] to bite, most Argentines are unable to detect any recovery. </s> |
2,040 | <s>[INST] On the eve of the Buenos Aires vote, the government (bravely) released figures showing [/INST] that, contrary to Mr Menem's more optimistic forecast, unemployment in May stood at 17.iog down from 18.4% a year ago but up from 16.4% in October. </s> |
2,041 | <s>[INST] A year ago Argentines played safe and [/INST] re-elected Mr Menem for a second term even as unemployment peaked. </s> |
2,042 | <s>[INST] But since then the [/INST] president's support has slipped to around 25%. </s> |
2,043 | <s>[INST] His consolation is that, as several leaders of a divided opposition have been [/INST] tainted by the kind of corruption scandals that are more often associated with his own entourage, their standing has fallen even further than his own. </s> |
2,044 | <s>[INST] From his new base in the city hall, just [/INST] across from the presidential palace, Mr de la Rua may hope to change this trend. </s> |
2,045 | <s>[INST] Mr Menem and Mr Cavallo have [/INST] a year to fix the economy before the next congressional elections. </s> |
2,046 | <s>[INST] The two spent several months squabbling last year [/INST] but now each appears to have decided, however reluctantly, that he needs the other. </s> |
2,047 | <s>[INST] But, for the time being, Mr [/INST] Menem has ceased looking for a replacement for him. </s> |
2,048 | <s>[INST] Mr Cavallo concedes that future [/INST] growth must come from "the supply side". </s> |
2,049 | <s>[INST] The government is trying to reduce the [/INST] cost of labour by cutting payroll taxes for health, pensions and social security. </s> |
2,050 | <s>[INST] These have fallen from 70% of the [/INST] wage to around 45%, according to Luis Secco of Estudio Broda, a consultancy. </s> |
2,051 | <s>[INST] But the government can no [/INST] longer count on inflation to cheapen Argentine labour. </s> |
2,052 | <s>[INST] And in deference to the residual power [/INST] of the (Peronist) unions, it has refrained from scrapping collective-bargaining agreements. </s> |
2,053 | <s>[INST] The government is also trying to make itself more efficient-something it [/INST] must do if it is to cut the budget deficit (which, though small, helps to keep interest rates punishingly high). </s> |
2,054 | <s>[INST] Having announced an unexpectedly fierce pruning of senior government jobs, Mr [/INST] Menem then characteristically backtracked, saying on June 26th that he would combine this with the creation of four new ministries. </s> |
2,055 | <s>[INST] There is also a bid to clean up [/INST] spendthrift provincial governments, forcing them to privatise their banks and trim their workforces. </s> |
2,056 | <s>[INST] The problem is that, in the [/INST] short term, all of this will destroy rather than create jobs. </s> |
2,057 | <s>[INST] In a symbol of changing priorities, Martin Redrado, a bright young [/INST] technocrat who used to police the stock exchange, has been given a $70m budget to improve the skills of school-leavers. </s> |
2,058 | <s>[INST] Eventually, such measures should give Argentina [/INST] a more competitive economy, less dependent on foreign capital. </s> |
2,059 | <s>[INST] "Unemployment will be the major social problem in [/INST] Argentina for the rest of the decade," says Rosendo Fraga, a political analyst. </s> |
2,060 | <s>[INST] And not just in Argentina: on July 1st Brazil celebrated the second anniversary of [/INST] the real plan, an economic stabilisation policy (named after a new currency) which has used a strong, though not pegged, currency and tight money to tame inflation. </s> |
2,061 | <s>[INST] But sluggish growth and rising unemployment have [/INST] eroded the once-dizzying popularity of the plan's author, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. </s> |
2,062 | <s>[INST] Frustrated by the failure of the country's Congress to approve the constitutional [/INST] reforms needed to reduce a large budget deficit, Mr Cardoso is now attempting to get growth going by speeding up privatisation. </s> |
2,063 | <s>[INST] That may buy him time, but Argentina's plight [/INST] suggests that Latin America can no longer conjure up Asian growth rates with quick fixes. </s> |
2,064 | <s>[INST] ___ Document 222 of 400 Getting together [/INST] Author: Anonymous Publication info: The Economist 339.7972 (Jun 29, 1996): 42. </s> |
2,065 | <s>[INST] accountid=28034 Abstract: When Mercosur began hesitantly in 1991 as a free-trade agreement between South [/INST] America's 2 giants, Brazil and Argentina, and Paraguay and Uruguay, it seemed to be just another patch in a quilt of sub-regional pacts covering the western hemisphere. </s> |
2,066 | <s>[INST] In January 1995, its members agreed to [/INST] form a customs union, setting a common external tariff averaging 14%. </s> |
2,067 | <s>[INST] Full text: WHEN Mercosur began hesitantly in 1991 as a free-trade agreement between South America's [/INST] two giants, Brazil and Argentina, and two neighbouring minnows, Paraguay and Uruguay, it seemed to be just another patch in a quilt of sub-regional pacts covering the western hemisphere. </s> |
2,068 | <s>[INST] In January last year, its members agreed [/INST] to form a customs union, setting a common external tariff averaging 14%. </s> |
2,069 | <s>[INST] Already, trade between the [/INST] Mercosur countries has risen fourfold since i990. </s> |
2,070 | <s>[INST] Now the group is expanding: on June z5th, at a meeting of presidents held near the Argentine [/INST] city of San Luis, Chile signed a free-trade agreement with Mercosur, due to come into effect on October 1st Bolivia hopes to do the same by the end of the year. </s> |
2,071 | <s>[INST] Chile, which has the most open economy in [/INST] South America, at first stood aloof from its more protectionist neighbours across the Andes. </s> |
2,072 | <s>[INST] Instead, it hoped to join NAFTA, [/INST] the free-trade agreement linking the United States, Mexico and Canada. </s> |
2,073 | <s>[INST] But since Mexico's currency collapse has turned its trade [/INST] deficit with the United States into a surplus, enthusiasm for expanding NAFTA southwards has cooled in Washington. </s> |
2,074 | <s>[INST] Chile's change of course means that Mercosur will amount to [/INST] a market of 220m people with a combined GDP of nearly $1 trillion and total trade of $175 billion. </s> |
2,075 | <s>[INST] That is important in the wider argument about how to construct [/INST] a free-trade area covering the Americas as a whole, something the hemisphere's leaders have agreed to do by 2005. </s> |
2,076 | <s>[INST] It appears increasingly likely that the United States is [/INST] going to have to negotiate with Mercosur as a block, which it has been reluctant to do. </s> |
2,077 | <s>[INST] And Mercosur's leaders have wider ambitions: they have signed a framework agreement aimed [/INST] at developing free trade with the European Union, also by 2005, and they see Chile's Pacific ports as a route to expanding trade with Asia. </s> |
2,078 | <s>[INST] It has so far postponed [/INST] decisions on matters that divide its members. </s> |
2,079 | <s>[INST] Several hundred products will for years [/INST] remain outside both the free-trade agreement and the customs union. </s> |
2,080 | <s>[INST] Even Chile, which has not joined the customs union because its average external tariff of 11% is [/INST] lower than Mercosur's, has negotiated exemptions from completely free trade in wheat and flour for up to 18 years, to protect its backward grain farmers from their more efficient Argentine counterparts. </s> |
2,081 | <s>[INST] Brazil, which is big enough to need Mercosur less than [/INST] its partners do, has a disconcerting habit of throwing up unilateral trade barriers when it feels like it. </s> |
2,082 | <s>[INST] A year ago, when it increased tariffs on car [/INST] imports to a punitive 7o%, it initially failed to exempt Argentine vehicles, bringing Mercosur close to breaking-point. </s> |
2,083 | <s>[INST] In April, Brazil again failed to exempt its Mercosur partners when [/INST] it changed its rules on textile imports, requiring them to be paid for in 30 days rather than six months. </s> |
2,084 | <s>[INST] Brazilian officials say the decision, since reversed, was [/INST] an administrative mistake, but it cost Uruguay up to $40m in lost exports. </s> |
2,085 | <s>[INST] They include improving navigation on the Parana-Paraguay river system, crossing the River Plate estuary with [/INST] a bridge and the Andes between Chile and Argentina with a tunnel, and building gas pipelines from Bolivia and Argentina to Brazil's industrial heartland of Sao Paulo. </s> |
2,086 | <s>[INST] Argentina pegs its currency to [/INST] the dollar, for instance, but Brazil is gently devaluing. </s> |
2,087 | <s>[INST] And they differ in their [/INST] vision of what their group should be. </s> |
2,088 | <s>[INST] Carlos Menem, Argentina's president, likes [/INST] to talk of the European Union as a model. </s> |
2,089 | <s>[INST] Even the frail machinery for [/INST] settling trade disputes is not yet properly tested. </s> |
2,090 | <s>[INST] Brazil's President Fernando Henrique Cardoso joked this week [/INST] that last year's car dispute was "a small matter settled over a lunch". </s> |
2,091 | <s>[INST] Paraguay's President Juan Carlos Wasmosy survived an [/INST] attempted military coup in April largely because of the support of his partners. </s> |
2,092 | <s>[INST] At their meeting in San Luis on [/INST] June 25th, the presidents formally agreed to make democracy a condition for membership. </s> |
2,093 | <s>[INST] It has also shown its economic worth: [/INST] increased exports to Brazil have helped Argentina to weather a recession. </s> |
2,094 | <s>[INST] Argentine and Brazilian firms [/INST] have formed more than 150 joint ventures. </s> |
2,095 | <s>[INST] Despite continued protectionist pressures from their weaker industries, Mercosur's leaders all [/INST] know that, to attract the investment they need to compete in the wider world, their firms want a bigger home market. </s> |
2,096 | <s>[INST] ___ Document 8 of 400 Islands thorn in UK-Argentine side: Relations have improved [/INST] but Falklands issue will not go away, writes David Pilling Author: Pilling, David Publication info: Financial Times [London (UK)] 07 Nov 1996: 09. </s> |
2,097 | <s>[INST] Full text: Leaving the Falkland [/INST] Islands aside, Anglo-Argentine relations could hardly be better. </s> |
2,098 | <s>[INST] Full diplomatic ties have been restored [/INST] and the red carpet is frequently rolled out for high-level visitors. </s> |
2,099 | <s>[INST] Only this week, General Martin Balza, Argentina's [/INST] army chief and a Falklands combatant, was warmly welcomed in London. </s> |
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