Argentina, Ecuador improve transparency; Central America worsens.

BY LATINVEX STAFF

While Mauricio Macri – Argentina’s president from 2015 to last December - was unable to tame inflation and boost economic growth, he was successful in one major area: Corruption.

According to the latest Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) from Germany-based watchdog Transparency International, Argentina managed to dramatically improve its transparency.

The CPI ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, drawing on 13 expert assessments and surveys of business executives. It uses a scale of zero (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).

Argentina received a score of 45, up from 40 in 2018. That was the best improvement in all of Latin America.

Ecuador also did particularly well, going from 34 to 38 points. Other countries that saw improvements include Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico and Uruguay.

Their improvement helped offset declines in Nicaragua and Honduras (down 3 points each), Dominican Republic and Venezuela (down 2 points each) and Panama, El Salvador, Guatemala and Paraguay (down 1 point each).

Meanwhile, Chile, Costa Rica and Brazil kept their scores.

As a result, Latin America saw a slight improvement – with an average score of 37.3 percent, up from the previous 37.2, according to a Latinvex analysis of the data from Transparency International.

Argentina will likely deteriorate in the next index, as the country’s new vice president is Cristina Kirchner, who along with her husband Nestor led the South American country from 2003 to 2015 in governments that were marred by massive corruption.

COLOMBIA SHINES AT DAVOS

This year’s World Economic Forum at Davis, Switzerland saw two major absentees: the presidents of Brazil and Mexico, Latin America’s top two economies.

The Davos summit is seen as the single-most important opportunity for government leaders to interact with the world's most important business leaders.

Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro cancelled his planned trip, citing security reasons (even though his hero, Donald Trump did attend), while Mexico’s Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador didn’t even show any interest in the event, just as he appears to be skipping all key international summits (despite Mexico being a G20 country, Lopez Obrador did not attend its last meeting).

Their absence was partly offset by Colombia president Ivan Duque, who did attend and will host the 2021 Latin America version of the World Economic Forum. Colombia is singled out, along with Brazil, as a bright spot in Latin America for CEOs and M&A experts alike.

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