Employers in Colombia are optimistic about the fourth quarter of 2010 and feel the outlook is much more encouraging than it was during the same period in 2008. With 25 percent expecting to hire new people, eight percent foreseeing layoffs and 65 percent predicting stability, the Net Employment Outlook landed at 17 percent.

Expectations have remained relatively stable from one quarter to the next, while year to year there’s been a slight increase of four percentage points.

The Castipán bakery ceased operations on August 20 when the bankruptcy process began. The liquidator assigned to the case, Gladys Mora, said they’ll first analyze the value of the company’s assets and then begin settling debts with creditors. The owners believe the company deteriorated after a decrease in sales resulting from new, stronger competition, while employees say the company was poorly managed.

Colombian exporters have been dealing with the worst case scenario these says due to consistent decline in U.S. currency prices.  The dollar dropped 17 pesos yesterday, landing just below the 1.900 peso mark, a complicated twist considering how much employment the export sector generates.

Analysts say the election of Juan Manuel Santos as President of Colombia, along with China’s decision to allow more flexibility in the yuan’s exchange rate and Colombia’s Central Bank’s decision to not extend dollar purchases past June 30 favor the peso’s trend towards revaluation.

In the short term, the Éxito Group plans to focus on new businesses, the restructuration of 5 to 10 stores, opening four new ones and developing of a partnership with Cafam, which it’s waiting for the Industry Superintendence to authorize.

For the country’s largest retail chain the economy has started a recovery process in which, according to President Gonzalo Restrepo, Éxito is “ready to compete”. Gas stations, insurance, real estate, the Exito credit card and travel packages produced excellent results, although they still don’t represent the highest income for the company; store brand sales also rose to 11 per cent.

President Álvaro Uribe Vélez said yesterday from Davos, where he is attending the World Economic Forum that he hopes the free trade agreement with the European Union is finalized by February, after which Parliament must give final consent. Some members have asked the EU to take a step back from the process arguing that Bogotá doesn’t respect human rights, recalling that 49 unionists were killed in Colombia in 2008.

During his stay in Switzerland, the Head of State was in and out of meetings with political leaders and businessmen from around the world explaining the conditions for investment in Colombia and looking for prospective commercial partners.

Results from the latest consumer opinion survey conducted by Fedesarrollo revealed that the Consumer Index Report (ICC) fell 3.5 points from 8.1 in September to 4.5 in October. The ICC has five components, two deal with a consumer’s perception of the current situation and three with the expectations for the upcoming year. The first two are used to build the Economic Conditions Index and the latter make up the Consumer Expectation Index (IEC). “The deterioration in the ICC results from a decline in both indexes”.

Latin American Banks didn’t lose their liquidity in the global financial crisis; in fact, the region’s Banks were among the few that managed to continue lending and gaining strength, as its colleagues from North America and Europe were drained.

The Latin American Banking Federation (Felaban) indicated that during the worst of the crisis, Latin American banks lost less value on the market than large international institutions. In the opinion of several experts, the region is in a privileged position to not only overcome the effects of the crisis but to take advantage of them; they are also better positioned in terms of profitability.

A study presented by Economática shows that the market value of Latin American Banks has increased 23,8 per cent.

The outlook was bleak at the end of the first semester when Andi reported a 6,7 per cent drop in production and 5 per cent in sales, and within them a decline of 4,5 per cent in national sales. At the end of the first month of the second semester things don’t look remarkably better as far as production and sales, but improved slightly in the remaining indicators.

As Andi has already said, “recovery will be slow, especially now that the situations with Venezuela and, on a lower scale, Ecuador have deteriorated.  This deterioration is one of the main factors contributing significantly to low dynamics in production and sales”, said Andi President, Luis Carlos Villegas.

Businessmen are more optimistic about Ecuador’s market given the complexity of the situation with Venezuela; nonetheless, market diversification is no longer just an idea, it’s a reality many companies are already beginning to explore.

Few businesses know that they can sell their invoices to a third party and get the funds quicker by using a financial tool known as factoring. In other words, a company invoices a customer for a service and, instead of waiting for payment, gets paid by a third party who then turns around and waits for the customer to pay.

Chile uses this system the most in Latin America, with transactions that represent 13% of its GIP; in Colombia it’s only about 1.7%, but with law 1231 in effect the future seems promising, especially in small and medium-sized companies (pymes).

Although deceleration in Latin America is more noticeable each day, director of the BBVA bank for South America, Vicente Rodero, trusts that growth in the region will not be negative.

The region’s resistance to the crisis in 2008 was apparent but production is expected to be stagnant in 2009 which means very little growth, and a moderate recovery in 2010.

“The economy will grow zero per cent, which is halfway between the situation in developed countries and that of China which will be close to eight per cent. Perspectives in Latin America are of a standstill but not an acute recession (…)”.