Peru, Colombia & Chile to outshine Brazil on growth this year

The economies of Peru, Colombia and Chile grew more than twice as fast as Brazil last year and are expected to outpace it again in 2012, according to an international report.
The report prepared by Reuters notes that swift growth by these three Andean countries has put renewed focus on regional heavyweight Brazil, whose relatively closed, high-tax economy is now sputtering below its potential.
Brazil has also lagged its peers in the BRIC club of emerging market heavyweights that includes China, India and Russia, it adds.

Officials in the Andean countries say they have benefited from low public debt loads, fiscal surpluses that allow them to invest heavily, and an aggressive pursuit of free-trade deals with big countries that have made their economies among the most open in the world.
In Brazil, politics have at times stymied ambitious fiscal reforms to eliminate the deficit in a country with powerful public sector unions.

Most economists now say Brazil will grow only around 3.3 per cent this year. Peru expects to grow up to six per cent and Colombia is so confident of its expansion that the central bank has been boldly raising interest rates.
“In open economies like Peru there are fewer market distortions, unlike economies which tend to close themselves and create new artificial barriers,” Peruvian Finance Minister Luis Miguel Castilla said in Montevideo. “That also means the capacity of companies in open economies to adapt in a context of international competition is much greater.’

Peruvians Eduardo Hochschild and Carlos Rodriguez-Pastor both made it onto Forbes’ 2012 World’s Billionaire List.

Hochschild ranks 578, with a net worth of $2.2 billion. The magazine remarks that Hochschild’s source of wealth is mainly from his inheritance and from his family’s mining and cement businesses.
Hochschild Mining trades on the London Stock Exchange, and has mining operations in Mexico, Argentina and Peru.

Forbes’ also mentions his other company, Cementos Pacasmayo, one of Peru’s largest publicly traded cement companies, which recently listed its shares on the New York Stock Exchange.
Rodriguez-Pastor ranks 634 on the list, with an estimated net worth of $2 billion. The magazine says Rodriguez-Pastor “has created an empire that spans anything a consumer could never need in his birth nation.”
Rodriguez-Pastor is chairman of IFH Peru, which is present in virtually all areas of the country's banking sector, owns supermarket chains, fast food restaurants, movie theatres, real estate firms, pharmacies, and financial services companies.

Mexico’s Carlos Slim, with a $69 billion net worth, heads Forbes’ 2012 World’s Billionaire List, followed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates with $61 billion, and Berkshire Hathaway CEO, Warren Buffet with $44 billion.

Cesar Moran - exportingnow@gmail.com

The amount of Peruvian millionaires continues to increase

Reported by Gestión.

In December 2011, there were 1,577 people with deposits that exceeded one million soles, higher than the 1,464 in 2010, according to data from SBS. The total number of wealth from these 1,577 is over 4.9 billion soles- 16.5 percent higher than in 2010.

"The number of new rich, wealth being generated at all levels, grows much faster than in other parts of the world, something similar to what happens in Asia", said José Goldszmidt, director of BBVA Global Markets for Latin America, to Gestión.

Goldszmidt said this trend was not unique to Peru, adding that it was also seen in other Latin American countries such as Chile, Colombia, and Mexico, driven by sustained GDP growth. "There is a direct relationship between GDP and wealth.”

"The amount of money being saved in Peru and Latin America, pension funds, mutual funds, family office and banks is very strong. The savings are related to the wealth generated,”

CESAR MORAN - exportingnow@gmail.com