Latin America: Year of the Panda?

by John Price, for Latin Business Chronicle, January 27, 2010.

When President Hu Jintao toured Latin American capitals in November 2004, he predicted that trade and investment flows between China and Latin America would both surpass $100 billion within a decade.  His forecasts turned out to be too conservative on trade but naively ambitious regarding the flow of Chinese investment to Latin America.  Two-way trade topped $140 billion in 2008 but, according to Shanghai’s SinoLatin Capital Analysis, accumulated Chinese investment in the region at the end of 2008 stood at a meager $12 billion, considerably less than the foreign direct investment intoLatin America from the U.S. state of Michigan.

What the booming trade figures underscore is the growing dependency between China and resource-rich Latin America and the compelling logic of partnership.  The disappointing investment flow levels, on the other hand, reflect the many challenges in bringing together two utterly different cultural, political, business and legal systems, in spite of the economic imperative to do so.   The missing actor, whose absence has prevented the marriage of the Latin American suitor and the Chinese bride, is the proverbial marriage broker — the bi-cultural professional class of bankers, lawyers, and consultants that can construct and maintain cross-border investments…(continue reading)

Guatemalan police arrest ex-president wanted in US

by Luis Angel Sas, for Yahoo News, January 26, 2010.

GUATEMALA CITY – Police captured ex-President Alfonso Portillo at a beach preparing to flee Guatemala by boat Tuesday, a day after U.S. authorities charged him with laundering money stolen from foreign donations to buy children’s books.

Dozens of police, soldiers and federal agents arrested Portillo during a raid on a house in the coastal province of Izabal, said Carlos Castresana, head of the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, a U.N. agency created to battle corruption and crime in this Central American nation.

“They had hired a boat to leave from a beach at 9 a.m., but before that, police and soldiers surrounded the house where he was hiding out,” Castresana said. Portillo, 58, was believed to be heading to neighboring Belize…(continue reading)