BANKING & FINANCE

Bank lending in Brazil rebounded in March, with new loans increasing for the first time in three months, signalling a thaw in credit markets in the Latin American nation (Reuters).

Banco do Brasil replaced several top executives on Thursday as newly appointed Chief Executive Officer Aldemir Bendine took the helm of the federally controlled lender (Reuters).

UBS AG agreed to sell its Brazilian business back to its original owners for about $2.5 billion, boosting its capital despite a small loss, and potentially reducing the need for a capital hike (Reuters).

Brazil’s banking spreads, or the difference between the rate that banks lend funds and the country’s benchmark borrowing cost, will only decline once its causes are attacked, the head of the Brazilian banks federation said (Reuters).

BUSINESS & ECONOMY

Brazilian companies are better positioned to weather the global downturn than their Mexican counterparts, which are struggling amid a tumbling peso and the U.S. recession, ING Bank analysts said (Reuters).

Brazil cut taxes on Friday on a range of domestic appliances and construction materials for a three-month period, the government’s latest attempt to lift Latin America’s biggest economy out of a slump (Reuters).

MINING

Brazil’s mining giant Vale said on Monday that it is selling iron ore at a 20 percent discount to 2008 benchmark prices, until new annually revised term contract price agreements were set (Reuters).

OIL

Brazil’s Petrobras is seeking around 240 offshore oil development vessels in the next five to six years, its chief financial officer said, deals that could bring new life to the stagnant global shipbuilding sector (Reuters).

Petroleo Brasileiro SA, Brazil’s state-controlled oil company, found more evidence of oil in an onshore block in the country’s Espirito Santo Basin, the Brazilian petroleum regulator said (Reuters).

TELECOM

TIM Participacoes plans to buy Brazilian long-distance operator Intelig in an all-stock deal worth $300 million, the Brazilian mobile phone operator said (Reuters).

BIOFUELS

The big four auto makers in Brazil joined forces with the Sugar Cane Industry Association (Unica) on Wednesday in a campaign aimed at expanding the use of cane-based ethanol in flex-fuel vehicles (Reuters).

Brazilian sugar and ethanol producers will open fewer mills next year and probably won’t expand sugar-cane planting as they struggle with debt amid a global credit crisis, a government official said (Bloomberg).

MEAT

Shares of Brazilian meat industry companies soared on Thursday after the government’s National Monetary Council approved a 10 billion reais ($4.6 billion) credit line for local meat processing companies (Reuters).

FOREIGN INVESTMENT

Rio de Janeiro’s state governor will meet with Baosteel. and offer land and partnership opportunities in a bid to persuade China’s biggest steelmaker to reverse its decision to leave Brazil (Bloomberg).

No revolutionary changes occurred during the South African national and provincial elections of April 23rd, but subtle swings by groups of voters made this young and vibrant democracy even more interesting to watch.

The ANC won the election with almost 66 % of the vote. Mr Jacob Zuma will be the next president of the Republic of South Africa, no doubt about that. But the ANC, despite massive and successfull efforts to boost voter turnout, fell marginally short of its comfortable two thirds majority, enough to alter the constitution on its own. Nevertheless, the party may form a government and rule the country by it self for years to come.

The Democratic Alliance, led by the tough mayor of Capetown, Mrs Helen Zille, reinforced its position as national opposition, climbing from 13 % of the national vote to almost 17 %. But the DA smashed the ANC in the Western Cape province, taking 52 % of total votes cast there and obtaning absolute control of the province. Mrs Zille may now form a provincial government. The loss of the Western Cape, though expected,  is a painfull blow to the ANC.

Newcomer Cope (Congress of the People), a party founded half a year ago by disaffected members of the ANC, failed to live up to the expectations of taking 10-15 % of the national vote. Though the party managed to establish itself as an opposition party in almost every province, its share of the national vote remained below 8 %. But Cope became the leading opposition party in Northern Cape, Eastern Cape and Limpopo provinces, overtaking the DA.

It appears Cope did not manage to persuade large numbers of ANC voters, but instead cannibalised the support for several other smaller opposition parties, like the UDM, ID and the ACDP, all of which saw their share of the vote decrease.

The Freedom Front, a fringe Afrikaner nationalist party,  saw its share of the national vote drop slightly too, though in absolute terms the numbers of voters grew with about 8.000. Though further analysis of these elections is needed, it appears the Front lost large numbers of voters to the DA in both Western Cape and Kwazulu-Natal provinces, while it gained 17.000 votes in Gauteng province, the industrial and political heartland of the country.

(Atlantico Weekly)

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MINING

Glencore International AG (GI) agreed to buy Surinam bauxite and finance the founding of Alumsur, the country’s new stateowned bauxite mining company.

HOTELS

The new Marriott Courtyard hotel in Paramaribo will be inaugurated in May, adding 140 rooms on six floors to the capital’s capacity.

VENEZUELA

Venezuela’s ambassador to Surinam suddenly returned home “for a extended vacation” after Surinam President Venetiaan complained to his colleague Chavez about the Venezuelan diplomat’s alleged “meddling in Surinam’s internal affairs”.

(DWT)

The condo market in Panama’s capital city is in “complete meltdown” with the number of sales “slowed to zero or very close to it,” said Sam Taliaferro, a Panama developer and widely-read blogger.

Read the full story at the International Herald Tribune

Three consortia placed bids for the contract to expand the Panama Canal in March. The winning companies will be known by May.

Read the story at Reuters

Faith in BNDES (National Bank for Economic and Social Development) waned along with faith in civil servants. But now that most governments own a bank or two, BNDES is back in fashion.

Read the full story in The Economist

Mato Grosso governor Maggi’s family company is the world’s biggest soya producer. His state has a poor record on slowing deforestation. He is loathed by many NGOs. But Mr Maggi seems to have had a change of heart.

Read the full story in The Economist

A compelling challenge to the current world order may be emerging from an unlikely trio of countries that boast both impeccable democratic credentials and serious global throw weight. They are India, Brazil and South Africa and their little-noticed experiment in foreign policy coordination since 2003 to promote subtle but potentially far-reaching changes to the international system has the potential to leave fears of a rising China in the dustbin of history.

Read the full analysis by Bruce Gilley at the Wall Street Journal

ECONOMY

Four months of rising car sales in Brazil suggest that Latin America’s biggest auto industry could already be over the worst of the global crisis, even as makers elsewhere face plunging demand (Reuters).

BANKING & FINANCE

Brazil’s government named Aldemir Bendine as chief executive of federally owned Banco do Brasil, seeking to boost lending in the country’s financial system and lower borrowing costs to stoke the economy (Reuters).

Private equity investors expect to invest more money in emerging markets in the next five years with China and Brazil topping the list of favoured destinations, according to an industry survey released on Monday (Reuters).

OIL & GAS

Brazil’s state-run oil company Petrobras has discovered signs of oil in the C-M-401 block in the Campos Basin, the company told Brazil’s National Petroleum Agency on Monday (Reuters).

Petrobras said on Wednesday a consortium formed by the company and BG Group found evidences of oil in the subsalt layer in Santos basin (Reuters).

Petrobras also said on Wednesday it plans to launch in May a bidding for 28 drilling units, most of them to operate in subsalt oil reserves (Reuters).

Petrobras said on Monday that natural gas reservoirs found in January by a consortium with Spain’s Repsol, are commercially viable (Reuters).

MINING

Cia. Vale do Rio Doce, the world’s biggest iron-ore producer, may boost shipments of the raw material after the second quarter as stockpiles fall and demand from Chinese builders increases, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said (Bloomberg).

MMX Mineracao e Metalicos SA, the iron-ore mining company which is seeking to sell all or part of its assets or voting shares by the end of this year, may draw interest from BHP Billiton Ltd. or Chinese steelmakers, according to Itau Corretora (Bloomberg).

ETHANOL

Santelisa Vale, one of Brazil’s largest sugar and ethanol producer, agreed to sell a 40 percent stake for an undisclosed sum to Swiss-based trader Louis Dreyfus Commodities, a source with direct knowledge of the transaction said on Tuesday (Reuters).

Cosan, the world’s biggest sugar-cane processor, rose to a six-month high in Sao Paulo on a media report it’s seeking a partnership with Brazilian state-controlled oil company Petrobras (Bloomberg).

A month before Panama’s presidential election, supermarket tycoon Ricardo Martinelli maintained a comfortable lead over the ruling party contender, according to a survey released on Thursday.

Read the full story at Reuters

MINING

Rains have delayed the expansion of the IamGold mining operation in Brokopondo district. This also delays the hiring of 200-300 new workers.
According to plan the 46 million USD investment should have been completed by april this year.

FRENCH GUYANA

Surinamese and French Chambers of Commerce have reached an agreement to intensify economic contacts between Surinam and French Guyana.

France also granted three loans for varous projects in Suriname, among which the rehabilitation of the East West road linking French Guyana with the Surinam capital, Paramaribo.

LAW ENFORCEMENT

Illegal copying of intellectual and artistic products will be countered throughly, Justice and Police Minister Santokhi announced. Special attention will be given to copyrights to musical products.

(De Ware Tijd, Waterkant)

ECONOMY

The South African government is to extend its Expanded Public Works programme fourfold in the next five years, spending R4 billion (US$440 million) to create 4.5 million job opportunities by 2014. If successful, this will give work to roughly 10% of the country’s population (SA Goodnews).

Optimal Energy, the Cape Town-based company behind Joule, SA’s first fully electric multi-purpose urban passenger vehicle, has secured funding to mass produce the vehicle. South Africans can look forward to pilot fleets of Joule on our roads and around the globe from 2010 onwards (SA Goodnews).

BUSINESS

State-owned regional airline South African Express is expected to post an improved profit for the six months to March this year, in stark contrast to its rivals, including South African Airways (SAA) which is expected to post its third full-year loss in the next few months (Business Day).

South African retail sales growth slowed to an annual 7.6 percent in February, from 11 percent in January, an industry group said (Bloomberg).

South African construction firm Raubex Group (RBXJ.J) was awarded two contracts worth 1 billion rand ($111.2 million) to rebuild Namibian roads, sending shares soaring nearly 10 percent (Reuters).

Fuel and oil group Sasol announced it had signed heads of agreement with two partners to develop a gas-to-liquids project in Uzbekistan (Business Day).

TAKEOVERS

South Africa’s No. 2 drugs producer Adcock Ingram plans to offer 2.1 billion rand ($228 million) for rival Cipla Medpro South Africa (CMSA) to boost its share of the generic medicine market (Reuters).

ArcelorMittal SA, the South African unit of the world’s No. 1 steel maker, has acquired a 16.3 percent stake in Coal of Africa Ltd. (CoAL) for 404.5 million rand ($44.98 million) in cash (Reuters).

PORTS

South Africa’s Richards Bay Coal Terminal, the world’s largest coal-export facility, shipped 5 percent more coal in March than the same month a year earlier (Bloomberg).

AIRPORTS

Lanseria International, SA’s largest privately owned airport, is believed to be up for sale, possibly to a foreign group of investors (Business Day).