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During an interview earlier this month, International Monetary Fund (IMF) head Christine Lagarde was queried by IMF communications director about how various emerging economies were handling the current slump in commodities prices, especially petroleum. Lagarde singled out...

Colombia’s central bank moved to tighten Colombia’s money supply yesterday, by raising the benchmark interest rate a quarter of a percentage point to 6.25%. Colombia is facing inflationary pressures due to the precipitous fall of its Colombian peso against the US dollar, falling...

Sweeden based Transcom WorldWide AB, trading on the Stockholm NASDAQ exchange (STO:TWW) today announced that it will close its loss-making contact center in Cali, Colombia, and that the board of directors is evaluating strategic alternatives for the company’s remaining Latin...

Local and regional governments (LRGs) in Brazil and Colombia should face similar challenges from the decline in commodities prices and their importance to their economies, according to Fitch Ratings. LRGs in Colombia and Brazil suffer from high numbers of informal workers (those...

Last Sunday, global management consulting firm A.T. Kearney released its 2016 Global Services Location Index (GSLI), an annual report researched by the firm that analyzes and ranks the top 55 countries for outsourcing worldwide based on metrics in three categories: financial...

Colombia’s unemployment rate dropped in November to 7.3%, announced Minhacienda, Colombia’s Finance Ministry, along with statistics agency DANE yesterday. The new rate reflects a drop of 0.4 percentage points over the 2014 statistic. The rate in the 13 largest cities was measured...

Yesterday, President Juan Manuel Santos, along with Finance Minister Mauricio Cardenas and Labor Minister Luis Eduardo Garzón, signed into law Decreto (Decree) 2552 of 2015, setting the Colombian monthly minimum wage at $689,455 pesos. This power was given to the executive branch...

2015 was characterized by economic deceleration and a general market uncertainty attributed to factors such as the Colombian peso’s devaluation, the fall in petroleum prices globally, a higher rate of inflation, the rise in interest rates, peace process negotiations, and the high...

The Banco de la República (Central Bank of Colombia), the Bilateral Assistance and Capacity Building for Central Banks Program (BCC) at the Graduate Institute, and the Swiss Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) are jointly organizing a conference on Policy Lessons and...

At its October meeting, the Board of the Central Bank decided by majority to give a 50-bp hike to the repo rate to 5.25%. This adjustment was above our expectation and market consensus, which aimed at a 25-bp increase. In addition, the Bank reactivated auctions of FX call options...